Authors: Elizabeth Essex
“Where are we headed?” she asked him as the the gray stone arches of Blackfriars Bridge rose in the distance.
“North.” The rough intonation was back in his voice—a caution not to give up her role in front of the watermen. “Along the well-trodden paths of the ancient city.”
“And your friend will see us this early in the morning?”
Tanner smiled his piratical smile that curved up one side of his mouth. “The rest of the city doesn’t stay abed till noon like the nobs.”
“No, I don’t suppose they do.” And the evidence was all around her—every sort of craft, from small wherries like the one they traveled in to small sailing ships and barges plied the waterway.
“Why did you lie to her?”
His question surprised her. “To whom?”
Tanner tipped his head back upriver in the direction of the Almonry. “To Molly Carter. Why did you tell her that Maisy Carter didn’t suffer?” he pressed. “It won’t have done any good. She’ll see for herself the bruising when she sees the body.”
“Perhaps. But I thought it would give her at least some small ease of mind, at least for now.” She could feel her shoulders slide up into an apologetic shrug. “Because that’s what people do. At times like that, sometimes people need to be told what they want to hear. And maybe when the time comes, she’ll see it for the kindness it was intended.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” He spoke as if he were slightly baffled. As if he never thought of saying the expected thing. As if he had only ever dealt in hard truths and uncomfortable realities. What a strange, hard life he must have lived.
“We’ll head up Bennet’s Hill and Godliman Street to Paul’s Chain, and then round the back of the churchyard toward Aldersgate.”
It was as if he could measure the precise distances between the turnings. “Do you carry a map around in your head?” She was trying to tease him, but he was so different from anyone else of her acquaintance that she had to ask.
“Yes. Don’t you? You always need to have two ways in and at least three ways out of every situation.”
“Every situation? Is that something you learned in your childhood?”
“Yes,” he said in his emphatic way. “But it would have suited— It is good advice for everyone.”
He meant it was good advice for her. That she would have been much better served to have thoughts of ways out of walking with Lord Peter Rosing. But she hadn’t.
But she couldn’t linger on that rather morose idea, as they had come to the arched spans of Blackfriars Bridge and neared the north bank of the river, where fingers of wharves and piers reached out over the muddy banks exposed by low tide to find the water.
“White Lion, gov’nor,” the wherryman nearest the bow called out.
Tanner slipped some coins into the oarsman’s callused hand. “Up close there, to the ladder.”
A ladder at the end of the pier descended into the shallow water, and led directly into the structure above via a trapdoor. Tanner jumped out of the wherry with an ease borne of long familiarity and had the trapdoor unlocked in a trice.
She clambered after him when he ascended the rickety rungs. “What is this place?”
“A wharf. Business of a friend.”
“He must be a very good friend indeed to give you keys and let you walk though his locked-up warehouse.” A friend whom Tanner must visit often, judging from the ease with which he navigated the dim, crowded interior. He wove his way around crates and stacks of gunny bags as dexterously as a cat.
Claire began to fall behind. “Tanner, wait.”
And then he remedied the situation by simply taking her by the hand. “Actually, the warehouse is mine. Fenmore’s, more accurately. As Fenmore, I bought up all the places where I used to live.”
He used to live here in this dingy warehouse?
But Claire did not have time to ask or ponder the difference between a warehouse and the splendor of Fenmore House, because he was moving forward with her in the dark.
She could not have said which way they went or how they made their way through the darkened building, because the entirety of her mind was consumed by the feel of his hand holding hers. His hand was long boned, and rather finer than she might have thought, but the feeling of his warm, sleek, muscled flesh pressing intimately against hers was so different from all of the times she had held hands with other gentlemen in dances, through the interference of cotton and kid leather gloves.
Tanner fanned his fingers to mesh with her and hold her securely at his side in a way that made her feel both held and free. He had held her hand briefly on the street, but this felt different. This felt close and intimate and personal in a way that had nothing to do with playing a role for public consumption. Indeed, they were entirely alone and in the dark. In more ways than one.
They burst out onto the sooty, twisting streets along the river. Despite the fact that the church bells were tolling out the seven o’clock hour, the streets were already crowded as they made their way around a small church on the corner of Thames Street, and up a narrow lane past the George Inn and an official-looking courtyarded building that bore the sign of the Herald Office. Public houses and gin mills alike spilled their patrons out onto the streets in the warm summer air.
Claire had never really walked on the street in London. In the country she might walk and ride freely, but not in London. In London one did not want to be seen walking more than a few leisurely blocks. She had strolled a short distance up Oxford or the new part of Regent Streets on her own power, but shopping trips had always been made with the Sanderson town coach idling alongside, at her mother’s disposal.
Encountering the world as a pedestrian, navigating wet gutters and pungent horse droppings, was certainly different from watching the world pass by from the privileged vantage point of the windows of a coach. As they made their way up the long reach of Aldersgate, dodging daytime drunks and cits alike, Claire hoped she never took such a ride for granted again.
And she was rather disappointed to find that here, in the narrow, well-ordered streets of the City, Tanner did not drape his arm across her shoulders. But neither did he let go of her hand when they turned into the strange stairstep configuration of Angel Alley.
Tanner evidently knew his way here better than he had in the Almonry, because he did not need to pause for direction but went right to the rear door of a house that fronted on Jewin Street, and knocked.
As they waited, Claire could hear a mumbled shuffling sound nearing the door.
“Who is it that bothers an old man so early in the morning when half of London is still abed, and before he has broken his fast?”
“Elias, it’s the Tanner.”
A small peephole in the wall to the right of the door sprang open and then shut with a snap. And then the door opened, revealing a gray-bearded old man in a nightcap and dressing gown.
“Tanner, my boy. Come in, come in. And tell me what you’re about.” The old man’s wiry eyebrows rose when he saw Claire standing behind Tanner. “And company, as well. Well, this is a special occasion. Come in, come in.”
The old tradesman picked up a taper from the small table in the entryway, and shuffled off down the corridor into the gloom. Tanner plunged after him with the ease of a familiar, and Claire once more had to move quickly to keep up or be left behind.
The old man led them through an unlit workroom, and up some narrow stairs into a small sitting room brightened by high windows, and made comfortable with several well-used upholstered chairs. “Have you broken your fast? Come have something to eat. Let me offer your friend a chair. It’s a long way from the wharves to Jewin Street.”
“Thank you. Elias Solomon, this is my friend Claire. Claire, Elias Solomon is a goldsmith of some repute.”
“Miss Claire.” The old tradesman made a courtly, gentlemanly bow. “Any friend of the Tanner is a friend of the Solomon brothers.”
“Thank you. Likewise, I’m sure.” Claire returned his manners with a curtsy of her own, and looked about the small room over the workshop. A small table positioned nearby, with decanters of water and wine and a plate of fruit. And no trace of a brother.
The goldsmith must have followed her gaze. He gestured to the table. “Come have some watered wine,” Mr. Solomon offered.
“Thank you.” She took a tentative sip, knowing it was only right to accept the man’s hospitality, but she noticed that Tanner did not. And then she did what she always did when she felt nervous or out of place; she made small talk. “How did you know we had come from the wharves?” It was as if everyone saw things she couldn’t see.
Her question elicited a chuckle from the goldsmith. “Because he comes in the back, with damp shoes and damp hems like he always does.” He flicked a gnarled finger toward Tanner’s redingote. “And no carriage in the street in front of my shop, where it would do me some good to attract customers. And he brings with him such a pearl, I know he must have found you in the South China Sea, and come straight from his ship to me.”
Claire laughed at such charmingly fantastical praise but was more pleased to see that Tanner smiled along as well. “I found this pearl in Richmond, actually.”
“Farther up the river.” Mr. Solomon waved his hand. “But a pearl from the water all the same. Now tell me why you’ve come.”
Tanner did not prevaricate. In his usual abrupt manner, he produced the watch fob and thrust it at the man. “What can you tell me about this?”
“Ah. This.” The tradesman’s eyes narrowed. “Where did you get it?”
“From a murdered girl.”
The older man heaved out a sigh, and made a face like soured milk. “This is what you bring me, murder before breakfast? Who can eat with such things going on?” He squinted at the golden fob in the light from the window for a moment before he shook his head. “I don’t like it. We’ll go downstairs.”
Mr. Solomon led the way back down the stairs, and into his dark, meticulously organized workroom, to a table with scales, small crucibles, and pan weights lined up along the top.
He lit several lamps before he drew a high stool to the worktable, and turned the fob over in his hand. “Tell me what you already know.”
Tanner glanced at Claire and then said, “Gold aureus of Emperor Claudius, minted around the year 46, commemorating the conquest of Britain.”
“Yes.” Mr. Solomon made a considering face, with his mouth turned down at the corners. “Stamped
De Britann
with the equestrian mounted over the triumphal arch. But you didn’t come to me for a history lesson.”
“No. Miss Claire has already provided me with one.” Again Tanner’s sharp, conspiratorial gaze found hers. “What can you tell me about the fob itself?”
“Typical, nothing special. Looks like something from Field and Parker, goldsmiths and gunsmiths they call themselves, on High Holborn. Jumped-up tinkers, if you ask me—and you do ask me. This is why you come to me.” He picked up a pair of spectacles, and perched them on the end of his nose. “Who would buy jewelry from such men, who do two things badly?”
Tanner slapped his hand against the flat of the workbench. “Field and Parker,” he repeated, as if he were adding the name to a catalogue in his head. Or perhaps just accessing the catalogue that was already there. “Their guns are fair enough. So a countryman with money but no discernment? Or someone of the
ton,
who is canny, and knows Field and Parker will do the work quickly and cheaply, since he already buys guns there?” Tanner fired off his deductions with rapid-fire surety and conviction. As if it were obvious, and not guesses he had made within a split of a second. “High Holborn is just far enough out of Mayfair to make him feel like he’s got a bargain.”
It was astonishing how absolutely he could draw such conclusions.
Mr. Solomon was more amused than amazed. “This is good. A likely story. Now.” He examined the coin more closely, turning it over and over in his wiry fingers.
Tanner’s tone grew sharp with impatience. “What else? What can you tell me about the coin?”
“Tell
you,
who sees everything, and knows so much? What do you think I will tell you?”
“You know things I don’t. You see things I can’t. This
is
why I come to you first thing in the goddamned morning, when dawn is in the air and half of London is still abed.”
“The lazy half. This is true.” The old goldsmith held up a gnarled finger, and then gestured dismissively to the watch fob he set on the table before him. “A trinket for a nobleman. As you say.”
“A girl has been murdered, Elias. By the man who wore this fob. Look again.”
The reminder of murder sharpened the old man’s eye. He took up a small hand magnifying lens to amplify his vision and examine the watch fob more closely.
He held the ornament close to the lamp, and squinted down the eyepiece. “I have seen this coin. No.” He held up a finger to correct himself. “No.”
Tanner crowded closer to the workbench, as if he would try to see exactly what the old man could see.
The old goldsmith took the hand lens down from his eye and turned the fob over in his hand, frowning and turning the corners of his mouth down into his gray beard. “There’s”—he paused and narrowed his eyes again at the fob—“something that’s not right. Must the fob be preserved?” He looked to Tanner. “Are you attempting to return it, or may I remove the framework of the fob to release the coin within?”
“Yes.”
“I will of course repair it and return it to its original state. Neither the owner, nor Field or Parker”—Mr. Solomon said the names with amused contempt—“will know what has been done.”
Tanner was typically to the point. “Do it.”
The goldsmith took a small pair of snips off his worktable and had the framework of the fob off in a trice. And then he did the most astonishing thing. He put the coin up to his nose and took a long, indecorous, quite audible sniff at the thing. And then he cast it down upon his table, letting it bounce and roll around in ever smaller circles until it dropped.
“It doesn’t ring true.” He shook his shaggy beard. “I smell a fake.”
Chapter Twelve
“Smell?” Claire did not understand.