VII.6
J
OCASTA CAME TO a stop and Molloy continued chewing down on his scrag end of boiled meat for so long, she thought he was never going to come to speaking at
all. Sam sat close to Jocasta.
‘You know there was murder done at His Majesty’s last night?’ Molloy said at last, gave a loud belch and fitted his pipe back into his mouth.
She nodded. ‘A lass, and her lover slashed his wrists is what I’ve heard.’
Molloy folded his arms together and looked mean at her.
‘So it is said ‒ and Christ, how London loves it! I saw three w out on their morning ride with yellow roses in their hair, and two fellas all lace and lavender with red ribbons on their wrists. Stupid fuckers. If they knew how a body felt they’d be less likely to make a romance of it.’
Jocasta shrugged. ‘Let them do as they will. You’re just fractious you aren’t the man selling flowers this morning. You say it’s all bound up?’
‘This little troop of loveliness you’ve thrown a rock at, Mrs Bligh, have killed two lads and a woman. Why should killing more trouble them?’
‘Maybe.’
Molloy paid some attention to his pipe till he was hidden in billows and dances of smoke. ‘You are a singular woman, Mrs Bligh, and noted for walking alone. Given I know that, and you know that, will you be guided by me?’
She put her elbows on the table. ‘That’s dependent which way you are shoving, Molloy.’
‘Good enough. Ripley’s right. You need a Navy man, but one that’s worth trusting. There’s a few on the river that used to serve. We’ll go and have a chat. And we’re going to let news of the killings spread. No one takes a liking to men that pick off kiddies for sport. Maybe it’ll all come apart easy. But it’s good to have some angry friends at hand if the knot tightens the other way.’ He switched his attention to Sam and pointed his pipe at him. ‘And you, fella, are going up to those kilns.’
Sam found reason to pick up Boyo and hold him. The dog licked his face. ‘Why so, Mr Molloy?’ He threw a nervous glance Jocasta’s way, and she caught and held it.
‘Because, boy,’ Molloy continued, ‘I reckon if you spend some time up there you’re going to find someone that saw something on Sunday when Blondie got herself killed. If your mistress weren’t so used to looking to cards or her own wise self for answers, she’d have thought of that before now.’
Sam opened his mouth, then shut it up.
‘The lad can come with us, Molloy,’ Jocasta said.
‘You scared?’ Molloy kept his eyes on Sam.
‘’Course he’s afraid. He had two of his mates picked off.’
Molloy ignored Jocasta and leaned towards Sam across the table. ‘When does Tonton Macoute hunt, boy?’
‘Night, sir.’
‘And what is it now, boy?’
‘Day, sir.’
Molloy looked impressed and gave a slow nod, then reached into his waistcoat. There was a flick of his wrist and Sam found himself looking at a folded blade that spun across the table towards hi. It had a bone handle, yellow with age and handling. He set down Boyo, but made no move to pick it up.
‘You can take that from me, and the dog from Mrs Bligh. Go. Come back before it gets dark and meet me or her here. Tell Sarah at the bar, you’ve got Molloy’s word to pay with, and then stay and wait if you must.’
‘Shall I, Mrs Bligh?’
‘If you’re willing, lad.’ Sam nodded and took up the knife. He tucked it in his waistband, whistled to Boyo and left the room. Jocasta watched them go. ‘Ten years I’ve fed that dog. He never even looks back.’
‘Ha! He goes where he’s needed.’
‘What you give him the knife for? He’s no notion of the use of it.’
‘Bit of steel in the pocket, bit of steel in his spine.’
Jocasta turned back to Molloy and watched his dry, cracked face.
‘What’s this to you, Molloy? Why you being so helpful when there’s no profit in it?’
He let the smoke slip out of the side of his mouth, till it wavered thin like a last breath. ‘Maybe there will be. I’ve learned to take a long view in these days. But as much . . . I’ve got two boys and a little girl. Eldest wants to get on a boat, younger one is fool enough to fancy a red coat. The girl I’ll marry to a shopkeeper and get her to tend me in my glorious age. As for the lads, bombs and bullets they’ll have to deal with themselves for their foolishness in choosing so unprofitable a career. But I’ll not have their throats cut by an inkstained murderous clerk and his bitch mother, nor any fucker who goes round slicing up little kids to feed the Frenchies our news.’
He stood and pulled his cloak round him. Jocasta sat where she was and looked at him with her head on one side.
‘Molloy, you tight thieving squeezing crack-faced dog. You’re a patriot!’
‘I used to mark you as a woman of few words, and liked you for it. Now you’re running on like a wife. You going to sit there yapping or follow me to where there’s business to be done?’
Jocasta heaved herself upright.
As soon as Harriet reached Berkeley Square she summoned Mrs Martin to her room.
‘Yes, madam?’
‘Mrs Martin, I wanted to thank you for your tact and help when I returned here last night.’
The housekeeper folded her hands in front of her and gave a quiet nod.
Harriet had wanted nothing more on returning hme than to kiss her children and her sister at once, when this woman, waiting half the night in the hallway to do her any service she required, had gently drawn her attention to the blood all over her gown and hands. She had guided Mrs Westerman to her room, undressed her and wiped the last traces of it from her palms while Mrs Westerman stared into the candlelight and wept. Then, red-eyed but calm, Harriet had visited her sister and children and seen them safe more like a woman than some devil escaping hell.
‘It must have been horrid, madam.’
Harriet thought of Isabella’s body lying across Morgan’s knees. ‘Yes. It was. The stomach wound had bled a great deal.’
After a short silence Mrs Martin spoke again. ‘May I ask how the Captain is, madam?’
Harriet put her hand to her neck, and pushed some thread of hair away from her cheek. She had spoken at length to Dr Trevelyan about the little scene with James and the model boat. The doctor had been encouraging, and thought it interesting that the model boat seemed to have shaken loose some memory, but was cautious as always about James’s prospects of recovery. Telling Trevelyan the history of Mr Leacroft, Bywater and Isabella had been more difficult. The horror and cost of it had reared up again before her in the shock written on Trevelyan’s usually calm face. She allowed herself to remember the pressure of her husband’s embrace for a moment, the warmth of the breath on her neck as he said her name, and she touched her throat with her fingertips.
‘Much the same, Mrs Martin. Now I have a favour to ask you.’
‘Anything, madam.’ The housekeeper straightened up and smiled willingly at her. She seemed to be one of those people with the good sense to put down an unpleasant thought and move away from it, treating it as one would a dog of suspicious temper. ‘Since you came it’s been made clear to us that a word from you is as good as one from Mrs Service or Mr Graves.’
‘Thank you. But this is not something I can
order
you to do.’ Harriet turned to her and spoke with a slightly brittle brightness. ‘I wish to borrow some clothes from you, then have you come with me to Lord Carmichael’s house.’
The woman lost her smile, looked a little stunned and gave a mumbling assent, then turned to leave the room. Her hand on the doorknob, however, she seemed to reconsider and turned back towards Harriet.
‘May I speak my mind, madam?’
Harriet kept the bright tone as if she might win her point by sheer good-humour. ‘Do, Mrs Martin.’
‘I mean no disrespect, madam, but I think you have in mind to pass for a servant and get into conversation with Lord Carmichael’s household. I need to tell you, I don’t think you’ll pass, madam. Not even if you dress in rags.’
Harriet frowned. ‘You think I cannot adopt the proper tone?’
‘I think you have no notion of the manner of it, madam. How could you? And if you wish to talk to the people there, I know a better way. The beau of Susanna, maid at the house on the opposite side of the Square, he’s a footman at Lord Carmichael’s, and there would be nothing strange about me popping in to give him some message or other on my way to elsewhere.’
Harriet thought at first to protest, but something in the calm certainty of the young woman made her falter. Instead she said: ‘What is your suggestion?’
‘You and I can go in the carriage together. Drop me a little out of the way and I’ll swear if it can be done, I’ll come back with what you need. Now how’s that, Mrs Westerman? And no need for you to be seen playing at being a servant as if it’s a holiday.’
‘It is a better idea, Mrs Martin.’ Harriet hesitated. ‘I hope I did not insult you with my request’
The woman paused. ‘I am not in a position to take offence, madam. You are as good a mistress as many and better than most, I think. But your feet don’t touch the ground in London much between carriage, chair and porch, do they? That restricts your knowing.’ She folded her hands in front of her again, and became once more the model of an efficient servant to her house, as if the hand of some deity had passed across her face and masked her from the world. ‘You’ll wish to be leaving now, madam? I’ll have Slater fetch the carriage round.’
Harriet nodded and looked down at the hem of her dress. It was perfectly clean and coloured pale. In the country she could never manage more than half a day without kicking up mud and dust and tearing the thin fabrics on brambles as she went about her estate. How much easier it was to keep decent in Town, for all the blood she walked through.
The river was as crazed with noise and traffic as the Strand. Dozens of wherries with an oarsman or two and little nests of passengers in the stern rowed back and forth across the water. The men held their hats in place and tried to look at ease, while the women pulled their skirts tight around their ankles to keep them out of the wet. Along the river, great merchant ships waited to unload their goods or see to their provisioning, making the Thames a winter forest of masts and ropes.
Jocasta and Molloy went along the banks as best they could, each stopping and talking with whomever they could hold on to by the arm for enough time to get a word and a story out. The faces of those they spoke to looked grim and angry, then like as not they shook their heads and carried on. It took hours, and Jocasta was ready to curse Molloy for a fool and wring the neck of the next fella who pointed to the ships – as if a merchant seaman would do her any good – till a youngish man who wore, with a swagger, a neater coat than most, said, when his headshaking and teeth-sucking was done: ‘Try that way, if that’s your liking, mate. If I hear Proctor tell me one more time about the great heroes of the sea he’s served with, I’ll break my oar over his back. You’ll find him down along by the by the Black Lyon Stairs – works there with his nephew, Jackson.’
Jocasta twitched Molloy over with her finger. In turning, he slipped a little in the mud and snapped at the man who steadied his arm.
‘We have a beginning,’ she said.
‘At last,’ Molloy grumbled, with a bitter and bitten look. ‘Though they would point us back all the way we’ve come and a step more. I don’t like water. Never have. I was built to travel on land.’
‘I’m of your mind. And the bank stinks worse than the Shambles. Our way lies along it though, so watch your step or the River Gods will grab you and drag you down to drown you.’
Harriet was feeling rather content with herself by the time she and Mrs Martin had returned to Berkeley Square. Mrs Martin had been greeted as a celebrity in Lord Carmichael’s kitchen, bringing as she did selected gossip of Crowther and Mrs Westerman’s investigations. She had been there a good while and was a little apologetic on returning to her seat in the carriage.
After relating what she had learned, she added quietly; ‘I am sorry, ma’am, but I did speak of you coming home last night with Miss Marin’s blood on your dress. It is the sort of picture the cook there reads all the true confessions of Newgate for, and it turned her most confiding.’
Harriet immediately reassured her. ‘Mrs Martin, you have been wonderful, and I have no argument with you.’
They carried on together to the workshop of a Mr Prothero as a result of the information Mrs Martin had won from the household, and the little shock of Mrs Martin’s earlier reprimand was salved by Harriet’s own performance as a rich and chatty wife. When the carriage steps were let down in Berkeley Square again therefore, Harriet was most satisfied.
She was keen to share what she had learned, and it was not until she was opening the door to the library that she remembered she was very angry with Crowther. He was standing in front of the fire when she came in, leaning more heavily than usual on his cane. He turned towards her, his expression uncertain. She paused on the threshold.