“It looks to me like yer best chance’d be to bring along the big fellow you married. And some other big fellows, with cudgels.”
“His Grace wasn’t back by the time I got to Shadwell,” Lydia said. “There’s no telling when he’ll get back. In any case, there isn’t time to send for him—or anybody—and wait for them to come. It’s growing dark already. We haven’t a minute to lose if we want to take her by surprise. We’ll have to make do with any reinforcements we can collect in Mad Dorrie’s neighborhood. The kind who look like they belong there.”
“I know some fellers there,” Tom said. “And some game gals.”
Meanwhile, within Mad Dorrie’s filthy house, Nell was rapidly succumbing to blind terror.
Ever since Annette had left, Nell had become Corrie’s chief girl. She had all of Annette’s frocks, which were by far the prettiest, and all of Annette’s special customers, who were not so pretty. But they paid the most, and Nell got to keep half, and if the work was often disagreeable in the extreme, there was less of it.
Today, Corrie had promised that Nell would hardly have to work at all anymore, because they were going to be rich and go to Paris. They’d catch Annette, and get back everything she’d stolen, and be even richer.
The more time passed, the less Nell was liking the plan. They’d be making the first part of the trip in the slimy, filthy boat tethered a short distance away at a broken-down wharf. Nell had no affection for boats, especially small ones, and especially ones that had been used for collecting dead bodies from the river. She didn’t know how Corrie had come by the boat, or the house, which, filthy as it was, bore all the signs of having been lived in very recently.
At present, darkness was settling in, and wind blew in from the river through numerous chinks. Corrie was down at the boat, loading some necessities for the journey. The two gentry morts were locked up in the storeroom, but they were precious quiet, and Nell felt very much alone. Every time the wind blew, it sounded like human moans, and the house creaked and cracked, as though someone walked about in it.
Nell knew the house had belonged to a river-finder, because the notices offering rewards for recovery of the bodies were tacked up on the walls. It wasn’t hard to figure out that this house had held more than its share of corpses. To her, it smelled like death. Shuddering, she stared at the note on the table.
Corrie had spent hours writing one note after another on the back of old handbills, and with each new note, she demanded more. In between, she amused herself by going into the storeroom and telling the girls what she would do to them if the Duchess of Ainswood didn’t do exactly as the note told her to.
The trouble was, Nell was becoming surer by the minute that Coralie Brees was going to do what she threatened just for spite. She hadn’t any reason to leave the girls alive, and it wasn’t like her to leave behind anyone who might tell tales. She’d have her ransom money, and a boat, and she could slip away easy as anything in the night. Why leave anyone alive who might peach on her? Including Nell.
The door opened then, and Corrie came in. She took Nell’s bonnet and shawl from a peg and threw them at her. “Time to get goin’,” the bawd said. “It’s ten minutes to the gin-shop and back, and if you dawdle one extra minute I’ll send Mick after you to make you sorry.”
Nell was to take the note to the gin-shop, give it and a coin to the boy who swept the floor, and have him deliver it to Ainswood House. The boy, knowing nothing, would have nothing to tell anyone there. Corrie obviously didn’t want to risk Mick’s or Nell’s being bribed into betraying her.
Slowly, Nell put on her bonnet and tied the strings. Slowly, she drew on her shawl. Once she stepped out the door, she’d have but ten minutes, and she couldn’t decide which was worse: to come back and take her chances with Corrie, which chances by now seemed about as dim as the two girls’ make a mad run for Ainswood House, with Mick on her heels and likely an army of constables and magistrates at her destination, if she made it that far; or run instead for the boat and take her chances on the treacherous river.
By the time she crossed the threshold, her mind was made up.
At the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps, Lydia ducked behind an overturned boat. A moment later, she heard the footsteps turn toward the river rather than the path leading to the road. Peering out from behind the boat, she saw a feminine figure stumble down over the rocks close by the rotting remains of a wharf.
She drew out the knife one of the prostitutes had lent her and stealthily approached the figure, praying it was Coralie.
Frantically engaged in unlooping the rope tied to the pier, her prey didn’t hear her approach.
An instant later, Lydia had the knife at the woman’s back. “Cry out and I’ll have your kidneys,” she whispered.
One gasp, and her prey went utterly still.
It wasn’t Coralie, unless she’d shrunk a few inches in all directions.
That was disappointing, but it might have been worse. This turned out to be Nell, and she must have come from the house, which meant she knew what was going forward there.
Lydia drew her toward the slippery stones under the wharf. “Cooperate, and I’ll see that no harm comes to you,” Lydia told her in an undertone. “Are the girls alive?”
“Y-yes. Leastways, they was when I left.”
“In the river-finder’s house—not a quarter mile east of here?”
“Yes’m.” Nell was shaking, her teeth chattering. “Corrie’s there with ’em, and Mick’s watching outside. I was to send off the ransom note and come right back—they’ll be lookin’ for me any minute now.”
“She’s going to kill them, isn’t she?”
“Yes’m. Them and you. She weren’t goin’ to do like the note says. Goin’ to wait to spring on you ’n’ kill you first and get the money from you. ’N’ I expect she’ll kill the gals once she gets the money. ’N’ she said she’ll take me to Paris, but she won’t, I know. She’ll do for me in the boat and throw me over.” Nell began to sob. “I knew it were goin’ to be bad,” she gulped out. “Soon as I seen she weren’t bringin’ ’em back quick, like she said she would. She hates you, worse than anythin’ in all the world.”
Lydia moved away, untied the boat, and let it drift. Whatever Coralie accomplished this night, she would not escape that way.
“I’ve got to get Ainswood’s wards,” Lydia told Nell. “You can come along or try to make it to the Bell and Bottle. Once you get there, you’ll be safe enough.”
“I’ll come,” said Nell. “I won’t never get to the Bell and Bottle in one piece. Mick’s as bad as Jos and Bill.”
Then Mick would have to be disposed of first, Lydia decided. And disposed of quickly and quietly. That was not going to be easy. Her allies consisted of three street arabs, none more than ten years old, and two of the sorriest specimens of prostitutes she’d ever encountered. But that was the best she’d been able to round up on short notice, even with Tom’s help.
Everyone else immediately available in the environs was either too drunk, too broken-down, or too villainous.
She would have given anything at this moment to have Ainswood at her side.
But he wasn’t, and all she could do was hope Nell was right: that Coralie truly meant to wait until after she got the ransom to take her vicious revenge on Elizabeth and Emily.
And so Lydia hoped, and prayed, as she set out with Nell for Mad Dorrie’s abode.
Since their hostess had given them a detailed description of what she meant to do with them, Elizabeth and Emily had no trouble grasping the meaning of the sound they heard not many minutes after the door slammed behind Nell.
In the silence, it was easy enough to detect the sound of breaking glass. They’d already seen the bottle. Coralie had waved it in their faces several times.
Swallowing her revulsion, Elizabeth picked up the squirming sack she’d hidden under a decaying heap of straw, and slightly loosened the strip of petticoat she’d torn off to tie it with. She push
ed Emily toward the door. Emily flattened herself against one side of it.
“No heroics,” Elizabeth whispered. “Just run.”
Biting her lip, Emily nodded.
They waited what seemed like a year but was only about two minutes before the door opened and Coralie started in, the broken bottle in her hand.
Emily screamed, Elizabeth flung the sack in their captor’s face, and the bawd screeched when a terrified rat caught hold of her hair. Elizabeth hurtled at the witch, knocking her down. Emily ran out the door. An instant later, Elizabeth scrambled up and raced out after her.
She heard Emily screaming, saw the ogre Mick chasing her, heard the bawd screeching obscenities.
She ran to save her sister.
Lydia had been about to go after Mick, who was hot on the girl’s heels, when she saw Coralie burst from the house.
“Nell, Tom—all of you—help the girls,” Lydia snapped, then went for Coralie, who was headed in the same direction and, furious, was far more dangerous than Mick.
“Give it up, Corrie,” she shouted. “You’re outnumbered.”
The bawd paused and turned toward the sound of Lydia’s voice. She hesitated but an instant, then swore and changed direction, this time running toward the decrepit wharf.
Lydia followed, but more slowly, keeping her distance. “The boat’s gone,” she called out. “No way out, Corrie.”
Coralie kept on running, down the littered pathway, then down the slippery rocks. Then, “You bitch!” she screamed, and that was the mildest of the epithets she screeched out as she clambered down.
Above the earsplitting obscenities, Lydia heard in the distance the unmistakable roar of a mastiff in hunting mode.
“Thank God,” she breathed. She was not at all eager to go down to tangle with Coralie Brees on slippery rocks. Her knife would do little good if she stumbled and cracked her skull. She remained on the path above.
“Drop the bottle, Corrie,” she said. “You hear the dog. It’s no use fighting. She’ll tear you to pieces.”
Coralie moved then, but not upward toward the path. She scrambled over the rocks, under the wharf, and on. She was heading toward the overturned boat Lydia had hidden behind earlier.
The barking was growing closer, but Susan was still minutes away. In minutes, Coralie could right the boat and push it into the river. She’d get away, and tonight’s frustrations would only make her more dangerous, wherever she turned up next.
Lydia went after her.
Vere and his companions had heard the screaming from streets away and instantly raced toward it. As they neared the river’s edge, he saw a big brute bearing down on a girl, and several smaller figures bearing down on him.
“Lizzy! Em!” he roared. “This way!”
He had to shout several times to make himself heard above the furiously barking Susan, who was straining at the leash, primed for murder.
But finally the command penetrated, and the whole group froze briefly, then scattered. Two slender forms stumbled toward him. Mick stood alone, looking wildly about.
“Get him!” Vere ordered the dog, and released the lead.
Susan charged after Mick, who charged toward the river. The dog caught him by the leg, and down he went into the slime. Susan kept her jaws fastened on his leg.
Trent and Jaynes dashed into the scene then, and Vere left Mick to them while he hurried to his wards, who’d stopped to watch Susan capture Mick.
“Are you all right?” he asked the girls.
In the gloom, he could barely make out their faces, near as they stood. But he could hear them gasping for breath, trying to talk.
He reached out and wrapped an arm around each of them and drew them close. They sagged against him, and upward wafted an aroma reminiscent of low tide.
“By gad, you do reek,” he said, his throat tight. “When was the last time you had a bath?”
He didn’t hear their reply, because Susan, having relinquished her prisoner to Jaynes and Bertie, was barking again, frantically.
Vere looked about. He saw several figures in the darkening haze, and none bore the smallest resemblance to his wife.
“Lydia!” he shouted.
“Woof!” Susan said. Then she darted westward.
Vere abruptly released his wards and raced after her.
Vere pushed through the darkness, through a chill fog rank with decay. He couldn’t see the pathway, but blindly followed the dog’s barking.
“Lydia!” he roared again and again, but the only answer was Susan’s barking, growing sharper, more frantic.
He tripped over a rock, clawed for balance, righted himself, and ran on. The images tore at his brain: of Charlie, Robin, of cold tombs, of living faces—all those he’d ever loved—dissolving into the mist, dissolving into shadows, and vanishing.
NO! Not this time. Not her, please God, not her.
“I’m coming!” he shouted, his lungs burning.
A dark form loomed ahead. He noticed the overturned boat a moment too late and tripped, falling face down into the muck. He stumbled up onto his feet and started on, only to stop short an instant later when he saw them.
Not three yards from him was a tangle of shapes, writhing in the dirt and refuse at the river’s edge.
Susan darted toward them, then away, again and again, barking wildly.
She didn’t know what to do.
Neither did Vere. He saw the flash of a blade, and couldn’t tell who held it, or if both were armed. One wrong move on his part could end with a knife in the woman he loved.
He cleared his dry throat. “Stop playing, Grenville,” he said as calmly as he could. “If you don’t finish her off in ten seconds, I’ll do it and spoil your fun.”
There was a sudden movement—an arm shot up, the blade gleaming—then a shriek of triumph that made his heart stop cold, because it wasn’t his wife’s. Then another shriek and frantic movement.
He saw the tangle of bodies go still in the same pulsebeat he heard the hoarse, gasping voice. “Move so much as an eyelash, and I’ll slice you from ear to ear.”
His wife’s voice.
He approached. “Need any help, Grenville?” he asked, his voice shaking.
“Yes. Please.” Gasps between words. “Be careful. She. Fights. Dirty.”
Vere was glad of the warning. The bawd seemed half dead to him, but as soon as he’d separated the pair, Corrie got her second wind and tried to resume the battle. Vere dragged her—kicking, clawing, and shrieking fit to wake all of Rotherhithe, on the opposite shore—out of reach of his exhausted wife.
“Knock her out,” Grenville gasped, for the fiend showed no signs of tiring, but fought like the madwoman she was.
“I can’t hit a woman.”
Grenville trudged forward, ducked a swinging fist, and swung her own, straight into Madam’s jaw.
Coralie sagged.
Vere let her inert body drop to the ground. Susan leapt forward eagerly, growling. “Guard,” he told the dog. Susan straddled her and remained, snarling, her enormous, dripping jaws inches from the bawd’s face.
Vere was already moving toward his wife, who was bent over, clutching her side. He pushed her hand away, felt the wetness, felt his heart drop into a hole that had no bottom.
“Sorry,” she said, her voice so weak he could barely hear it. “I think the witch stuck me.”
He caught hold of her, and this time, when she turned into a dead weight in his arms, he knew she wasn’t pretending.
Chapter 18
Francis Beaumont stood in the crowd of onlookers near the Bell and Anchor watching the Duke of Ainswood carry his wife’s motionless form into his carriage. Within minutes, the place was abuzz with the news that a Drury Lane bawd had murdered the duchess.
Francis Beaumont was very unhappy.
It was not the duchess he grieved for, but himself. Coralie Brees would hang for sure, and doubtless she knew it, which meant she would make certain she had plenty of company dangling alongsid
e her on the scaffold. She would tell her tale, and she had a fine and long one to tell, with Francis Beaumont as star performer.
He was sorry he hadn’t killed her last spring in Paris, instead of helping her flee. But he had not been thinking very clearly then. Along with everything else, he’d had domestic problems, as well as a case of unrequited lust.
He’d set out to kill Coralie today, as soon as he’d heard, at Pearkes’s oyster house, what the stupid bitch had done. It hadn’t taken him long to figure out where she’d be, because an artist for the Police Gazette had told him about the old woman who’d been cut up and garroted. From the artist’s description, Beaumont had no trouble figuring out who the woman was or who the killer was.
Unfortunately, the Duchess of Ainswood had tracked the bawd down before he did. He wasn’t twenty yards from the house when all hell broke loose. As soon as he’d heard her tell Corrie she was outnumbered, he’d backed off. All Corrie had to do was spot him and call out his name, and he’d be numbered among the criminals. Had he realized the duchess had only a trio of scrawny boys and a pair of toothless, consumptive whores to help her, he might have been less cautious.
But there was no way he could tell in the fog and confusion.
Now there was nothing he could do. The constables had arrived within minutes of Ainswood and his men. The entire debacle, start to finish, could not have taken more than a quarter hour. In a very short time, Corrie would be locked up, and screeching out everything she knew to everyone who could hear her—and that would be most of the parish.
He would have to go away. Now. He dared not return home for clothes or money. Everyone knew where Francis Beaumont lived. His wife was a famous artist.
She wouldn’t miss him. There would be a line of men ten miles long waiting to take his place. And at the very front of the line would be a fair-haired French count.