I wondered. Mrs. Travers was a shrewd woman and must have concluded at some point that Leland and Gareth shared a bed. Had she told her husband? Would either of them have become so ashamed and enraged that they sent someone after them to kill them?
The meeting Leland described had been at New Year’s—the same time I had been in Oxfordshire getting married. It was March now. Would Mrs. Travers have waited that long to assuage her anger? And I could not see Gareth’s broken father having either the will or the strength to send an assassin after his own son.
“Have you remembered anything more?” I asked Leland. “I know you went to the Nines, I know you kicked up a fuss. Not very tactful, my friend. If you threaten someone, make sure you’re at a safe distance before you do so.”
“Did I?” Leland rubbed his bandaged head. “I don’t remember.”
“Unfortunately, those at the Nines do.”
“Well, if I did, then they must have deserved it,” Leland said with conviction. “I have heard of the Nines—a terrible place, my father says. It ought to be closed.”
“I believe it will be soon,” I said. “The man who runs the place, Forge, had his bullies take you out into a yard and rough you up a little. Do you remember that?”
“No.” He sounded mournful. “There are vast blanks about the night. I do remember arguing with Gareth in a carriage. About …” Leland scrubbed at the side of his head and let out a moan when he touched something sensitive. “I don’t know.”
“You were in a carriage?” I asked. “Your father’s? Your father’s coachman did not mention picking you up at the Nines.”
Leland looked puzzled. “No, not ours. I do not know. Gareth never owned a coach, that is for certain. It must have been a hackney—I remember a particularly long tear in the upholstery, and my father’s coachman would never stand for that. Gareth must have hired it, to take us to the man Gareth said he had an appointment to meet.”
“What man?” I asked, sitting up straight. “Do you mean Mackay?”
Leland blinked. “I do not know. Gareth and I were heading to meet a man about business, somewhere near Covent Garden.” He looked at me in perplexity. “Why did I suddenly I remember that? When everything else is gone?” He furrowed his brow, pain entering his eyes as he thought. He sighed. “No, nothing more. Forgive me, Captain.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“The point is, you are starting to remember,” I said, trying to sound reassuring and hide my growing convictions at the same time. “I know for a fact that you went to a tavern called the Bull and Hen in Seven Dials, in Little Earl Street, near where you were found. Do you recall that?”
Leland frowned and shook his head. “I do not remember a tavern. As I said, it is only flashes.”
“Tell me about the flashes,” I said. “Perhaps we can piece together what happened between your snippets of memory and what I’ve managed to discover.”
Leland sent me a grateful look. “Very well, I will try. As I say, I remember now that Gareth had an appointment that evening. I did not want him to go, and no, I do not recall why. I know nothing of what happened at Brooks’s or the Nines, but I know Gareth was very excited. I’d never seen him like that. Both enraged and happy. The next thing I remember, we were in a coach, and he …”
Leland closed his mouth, flushing a dark red. It was not a healthy color, but Leland’s fair face was not one that could hide embarrassment.
“You mean you became intimate,” I said. “In the coach.”
“Yes, Gareth, he liked … unusual places … when we found ourselves private. I was quite happy we had made things up between us, so I did not stop him. I let my appetite overrule my common sense.” His hand balled to a weak fist. “I should not give into such things. A man ought to always be in control of his appetites.”
His self-chastisement made me want to laugh. “Leland, my friend, every man on earth has let his appetites rule him from time to time. Common sense does not come into it.”
Leland regarded me in surprise. “Even you, Captain?”
Now I did laugh. “Good Lord, especially me. I’ve never been one to retain my sense when tempted by a beautiful lady. And I find so many ladies beautiful.”
His puzzlement was very Leland-like. “But you are married.”
“Lady Breckenridge tempted me most of all, and she continues to do so, even though we are now staid and married. But enough of the hair shirt, lad. What happened?”
His flush did not ease. “It is unclear after that. You say we went to the tavern? But I do not know. I only remember being … with Gareth … and then… Nothing. I woke up and …”
Leland’s voice broke. I placed a hand on his shoulder, my laughter gone. “Do not think on that that. Remember Gareth as he was.” I waited, letting his regain his composure. “Was your intimacy with Gareth before or after the meeting?”
Leland shook his head. “I have no idea. Before, I should think. Gareth was saying this would solve everything. I was trying to stop him going. If I hadn’t, if everything had gone as it was supposed to, then perhaps …”
“Leland,” I said severely. “Whatever did happen is not your fault. You must believe that. It is the fault of whoever waylaid you and struck you down. What you have told me clarifies one thing—that you were positioned to be found half-undressed. You say Gareth liked unusual places, but Gareth was fastidious, took such care of his clothing. A coach is one thing, the dirty cobbles of a passageway is something else. You were led there or taken there, coshed, and arranged as you were.” The killers might have meant the tableaux to be even more explicit, but Mackay had come upon the scene. Though I hadn’t yet ruled out that he might have directed it.
“You’ve already told me how you awakened,” I said. “Did you see Mackay right away? Was he hovering over you? Or did he run in?”
“I tried to get Gareth away,” Leland said in a faint voice. “I couldn’t. The next thing I knew, this man was bending over us. He looked respectable enough, and I begged him to run and find you.”
“Which was a wise thing to do,” I said. “I’m glad you summoned me.”
“You saved my life,” Leland said, his gratitude reviving my guilt.
“I wish I’d been in time to save Gareth’s.” I let out my breath. “I am sorry to keep asking you questions, but if I’m to find out the truth I need to be ruthless. I am convinced Gareth meant to meet Mackay, who was a dealer, of sorts, but of mostly stolen goods. And he was a blackmailer.”
Leland’s confusion was genuine. “A blackmailer? Why would Gareth want to have truck with a blackmailer? Gareth wouldn’t blackmail anyone.”
“I was rather thinking Mackay blackmailed him. Perhaps about you.”
Leland weakly shook his head. “I doubt Gareth would have been so happy if we were on our way to pay a blackmailer. No, he was quite anticipating something.”
“Then I believe Gareth went to see Mackay in Mackay’s other capacity. The man bought and sold artwork for others. I have heard mention of a book. Think back. Before this all happened, did Gareth talk about a book he either wanted to buy or sell?”
Leland frowned. “He never mentioned a book. But I would not be surprised if he wanted to sell something to make money. Gareth was ever trying schemes like that, and they never came off. He was very conscious about taking money from me and my father. It is one of the things we’d quarreled about—in the past and recently. Always, in fact. He wanted a way to be independent from me, he said. I told him he never had to worry about an income whether we stayed together forever or parted, but Gareth was always proud.”
Like Marianne. She depended on others to live, but she hated to be kept.
“He’d told me he’d found a way,” Leland went on. “But he never explained what he meant. I doubt the sale of a book would set him up for life, though.”
I felt a warmth run through me, which I’d come to know was a sign my brain had stumbled upon something important. “Perhaps it was not a book itself,” I su
ggested. “I might be too fixated on such a thing. Perhaps he found something inside the book. Something valuable, and he knew Mackay would know exactly how valuable.”
“If he did, he never told me what it was.” Leland deflated. “He ought to have told me.”
I understood why he hadn’t. Gareth had wanted to be certain he’d come into the money before he announced it to Leland. He’d set the appointment at the Bull and Hen, a place so notorious that anyone who saw them enter would assume Leland and Gareth had gone in for the usual reasons a man did. A private parlor, a meeting with a third man—the clientele of the Bull and Hen would likely not realize Gareth meant for a wholly business transaction to occur.
Gareth had either planned to collect the money from Mackay for whatever he’d brought to sell, or fix another appointment for the transaction. If a robber had got wind that Gareth or Mackay was walking around with a valuable object, they’d have motive to follow them and strike.
I was not certain a straightforward robber would then half undress the lads and leave them in Neale’s Passage, but perhaps he’d known they were mollies and had a sense of humor. Or, perhaps he’d realized that them being found thus would hint that it was a crime by someone disgusted at them, steering us away from the true reason they were set upon.
If my speculations were correct, then we were looking for a killer or killers who had been wandering near the Bull and Hen—or actually inside it—and happened to hear Gareth talk about this valuable object he possessed. Or, we needed to find someone else who knew about Gareth’s prize and followed them to Seven Dials that night.
I also wanted very much to know what Gareth had been selling and where it was now.
“I’d like to go through Gareth’s things,” I said. “Would you mind?”
“Not at all.” Leland’s expression turned sad. “I will have to sort through them myself, sooner or later.”
“I can make a start for you. Where did he have rooms?” The Albany housed many an upper-class bachelor gentleman, and if Leland liked to provide Gareth with the best, the Albany was a good possibility.
Leland looked confused. “He had rooms here. He was living with us.”
I hadn’t realized that. Another reason Gareth must have chafed. This house was luxurious in the extreme, but I remembered Gareth telling me he felt his confinement and wanted to be his own man.
“Bridges will unlock the door for you,” Leland said. “My mother ordered it shut, but no one will mind if you enter his chamber.”
“Then I will do so directly.” I rose, more animated than I’d been in a while. I could not turn back time and prevent Gareth’s murder, but I would see whoever had done it cowering at my feet before I handed him over to the Runners.
Leland subsided, his breathing still labored. “What does it all mean, Captain?” he asked me, tears in his eyes. “Why did Gareth die?”
“That is what I will find out,” I said. I reached down for his hand and squeezed it again. “I promise you.”
*
Gareth’s chamber was on the next floor up, in the front of the house, overlooking the street. Mrs. Danbury, I learned when I reached the landing, had the chamber in the rear, with a view of the garden. She came out of that bedroom as Bridges led me toward Gareth’s.
“Captain?” Mrs. Danbury quickly closed the door of her room, flushing, as though a look at her furniture would compromise her modesty. “What are you doing up here?”
I briefly explained. Catherine’s startled expression changed to one of understanding and curiosity. “I will help you,” she announced. “Bridges, do unlock the door. And have tea brought.”
I entered a chamber that was as elegant as any other in this house. The bed had delicate posts and a brocade canopy to keep out drafts, the drapes on the window matching those on the bed. The room was cold, the fire out, and Catherine ordered one built so we would not catch a chill.
Bridges hurried off to obey, and I stood in the center of the chamber and looked around me. While expensive and comfortable pieces furnished it—chairs, writing table, low sofa under the window—matching the décor of the rest of the house, Gareth had left his own mark here. Books and papers were piled on the writing table, a few markers from a gaming hell had been left on the nightstand, along with a programme from an opera, and a pamphlet on the latest political dilemma in Parliament. The armoire was filled with a fashionable young man’s suits, the small dressing room holding his boots, a dressing table with brushes, razor, teeth cleaners, scissors for precisely trimming side whiskers, a rack of neatly folded cravats, boxes of gloves. Everything was neat, because the Derwent servants tidied up after him, but this was a bachelor’s room through and through.
“What are we looking for precisely?” Catherine asked me, already opening and going through the night table.
“Precisely, I do not know. Anything valuable, or a book worth selling. Or something inside the book.”
Catherine turned at once to the low bookshelf near the window. I intercepted her. “The book in question might be … indelicate,” I said.
She flashed me a smile, sunlight dancing on her fair hair, reminding me why I’d been enchanted when I’d first met her. Donata had firmly supplanted her charms, but I could not pretend that Mrs. Danbury was not a beautiful woman.
“My second husband had all sorts of indelicate books,” she said. “Mickey enjoyed everything about the act, unfortunately with a good number of people other than me.” Her smile dimmed. “He liked to read about it, and showed me the books. So, do not worry. I cannot be shocked.”
Catherine turned quickly to the shelves. She’d laughed, but I’d seen the pain in her eyes. Her wretch of a second husband had much hurt her.
She and I looked over those books, and then everything on the writing table. I doggedly went through the armoire, the night table, then slid under the bed and checked the mattress. A maid carried in a tray of tea, uttering a small cry when she saw only my boots sticking out from under the bed.
I heard Catherine soothe her, and the delicate rattle of porcelain as the tray was set down. I scrambled out, let Catherine pour me tea, then I searched the dressing room.
I finished as the tea ran out, and sank glumly to the sofa. Catherine perched on the chair next to the writing table, nibbling a tea cake.
“Nothing,” I said. “Whatever Gareth had, it is not here.” The only books had been ordinary ones that could be purchased in any London bookshop—novels, travel books, and tomes on philosophy and natural history. They were finely bound editions, bought new, as opposed to the secondhand ones I’d collected, but nothing that would make a man rich for life. We’d found no exquisite volume of French erotica or even the prayer book Gareth’s father had given him. We’d rifled the pages of all the books and found nothing but a dried flower and a lace handkerchief, used as bookmarks. I felt behind the end papers and found nothing there either.
Catherine was more cheerful about the failure than I was. “He must have kept it somewhere else, or given it to someone. I’ll continue looking, Captain. We’ll turn it up. If this book does prove to be a gilded pictorial of people doing unmentionable things to each other, what would you like me to do with it?”
“Hide it,” I said. “And for God’s sake, show it to none in this household.”
Catherine laughed. “I think you are wise, Captain.”
She and I were friends again, at least. I departed the house, ready to leave the rest of the search to her. My daughter was due any minute, and I wanted to be nowhere but home when she arrived.
*
Brewster met me outside as I emerged. “Did the lad tell ya who done it?” he asked as he fell into step beside me. I’d walked the short distance, to the dismay of Donata’s servants, but the day had turned fine.
“He does not know,” I said. “But I’m ever more certain that Mr. Forge and his men had nothing to do with it.”
“His nibs don’t care,” Brewster said reasonably. “He only cares that the Nines
will close and be ripe for the plucking.”
I lengthened my stride, my knee protesting, but I ignored it. “I want to ask his nibs more about Mackay.”
Brewster shrugged as he kept stride with me. “You can ask.”
“Do you know if Mackay had been hired to procure anything of late for him?”
“No.” Brewster’s blank expression told me nothing. “I don’t ask what Mr. Denis gets up to. It’s his business, innit?”
“You simply do what you’re told?” I asked, impatient.
“It’s what I’m paid for. I work for Mr. Denis because it’s a good job, and what other work was I going to get when me fighting days were behind me? If you do what he asks and leave him be, he looks after you. Nothing more. I didn’t have nothing to do with this Mackay bloke, and I don’t know nothing about him. If I’d been asked to watch him, maybe I’d have something to tell you. But I wasn’t, so I don’t.”
Brewster looked untroubled—he simply stated facts. It must be restful to possess a mind that held neither curiosity nor obsession.
“All right then, please send Mr. Denis word that I wish to speak with him again about Mackay. Is it your job to do that?”
Brewster gave me a grin, unoffended. “In this case, it is. I’ll trot down there now while you say hello to your daughter, shall I?”
*
By the time my front door in South Audley Street came into view, a carriage had halted before it. I quickened my pace as much as I could on the drying cobbles and reached the house as the cloaked bulk of the white-haired Lady Aline Carrington disappeared inside.
I followed closely after her to find Gabriella in the ground floor hall, shedding her wraps into the footman’s hands. Gabriella looked around at me as I charged in, and she gave me a wide smile.
“Good afternoon, Father.”
I could not stop myself from catching her around the waist and pulling her into a firm embrace. Very un-English of me, but I’d learned, spending a large part of my life outside England, to treasure those dear to me while I could.