‘Jane! It’s Molloy here. Open up, girl!’
She did quick enough and held the door open with her foot, her hands being occupied with holding and guarding a candleflame. At the doorway to the parlour behind, Mr Crumley appeared patting his mouth with a napkin.
‘Molloy! What do you want here?’ Jane said. ‘I know for a fact there isn’t a person here owes you a penny.’
‘I need to know where Graves is. And better yet, Mrs Westerman’s address in Town, if you know it.’
Jane scowled at him. ‘Of course I know it, but why should I tell you? What you got to say to either of them?’
Molloy breathed hard. ‘I hate to make it habitual but I’ve a warning and it touches on Westerman. You know me as a serious type, Jane. Do I look like I’m playing the fool to you?’
The girl made her decision quickly and stepped back into the parlour, leaving the door ajar.
‘Wait there.’ She returned with a handful of coins and thrust them into Molloy’s hands. ‘Berkeley Square – number twenty-four – and use this for a hack. Mrs Westerman’s in the same place.’
Harriet heard the knock at the door as she was finishing dressing, and expected her sister to come in when she issued the invitation, but was surprised to find it was Daniel Clode who had entered the room.
‘Mr Clode!’ she said, and dropped the comb she had been fastening her hair with in surprise.
The young man hesitated a second, then stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him.
‘Mrs Westerman, forgive the intrusion, but I wished to have some private conversation with you. I have been speaking to your sister.’
Harriet turned back carefully to her mirror and made another attempt with the comb. ‘If it is regarding an engagement with Rachel, you know you have my hearty approval, but I had hoped you might wait, given the state of my husband’s health, before speaking about that.’
He took a step further into the room. ‘No, it is not that. But I suppose it touches upon it.’
Harriet finished with her comb and turned towards him. The candlelight made the red of her hair glint as if it had its own fire. She never powdered it when they dined at home. ‘If you come to bring further weight to bear on me regarding my behaviour, I wish you would not trouble yourself. The business, it seems, is successfully concluded. We have, we think, found who is responsible and will inform those who need to be informed this evening. There our involvement in the matter will end.’
‘No, not that either. Really, Mrs Westerman, if you wish to know what I have to say, it would be as well to let me speak!’
Harriet was silent.
me not one ounce of damage. As long as my association with Thornleigh continues, I shall have to spend my best efforts avoiding the kindnesses of every person of quality in the neighbourhood, rather than searching them out. Rachel underestimates the force of the Thornleigh name, seeing it embodied in Jonathan and Susan rather than in the estates and investments held in their names, and I have just told her as much.’
The image of herself dressed as a heathen and the loving exasperation in Clode’s voice drew a laugh from Harriet. ‘Oh Daniel, I thank you. But I fear I may be an awkward sister to have. Graves would probably agree with Rachel. He was angry with me yesterday.’
‘Nonsense. Well, perhaps. But know this: Owen would defend you and your actions to the bitter end. To you he will voice his concerns, but if anyone else spoke of you in terms of less than respectful admiration, he would horsewhip them. As would I.’
Harriet felt a warmth creeping through her body. ‘And what of the damage I do my daughter?’
Clode grinned at her, and Harriet almost wished herself young again. ‘I understand Lady Thornleigh herself has given you her own assurance on that point.’
Harriet stood and placed her wrap around her shoulders, then crossed the room to take his arm. ‘You are perfectly correct. Clode, I am glad you are here.’
‘I hear the Captain improves.’
‘It changes from day to day. This morning he was well, but last week he called me a whore and a spy and drove me from his room.’
‘I am very sorry to hear that, madam.’
She sighed then patted his hand. ‘But in general, I believe he improves. Now take me down to dinner. In a few hours all this shall pass away from us and we may concentrate on more suitable occupations. Crowther suggested at one point that if I couldn’t sit still, perhaps I could devote my energies to writing religious tracts.’
‘Dear God!’ said Clode. ‘I presume he was trying to read his paper at the time?’
Harriet laughed again.
‘I’ve never ridden in a carriage before, Mrs Bligh.’ Sam knew the urgency of their journey, but the novelty of watching the streets pass at such a pace was too bright a thing not to be loved and held tightfont>
‘Do not . . .’ said Molloy from his corner, and briefly removing a toothpick from his mouth ‘. . . get used to it.’
Jocasta allowed herself a half-smile in the darkness. ‘Tell Molloy what you found today, Sam.’
‘Yes, do. And give me my knife back.’
Sam passed it across with some reluctance. Molloy looked at the blade and tucked it into his waistband.
‘Not stuck any malefactors with it then, I see?’
Sam lifted up his chin. ‘Maybe I just wiped it after, Mr Molloy.’
‘Ha! You improve upon acquaintance, young one. Now tell me who you found.’
Sam settled into the corner of the coach. ‘There’s a boy spends time round the kilns. Gets pennies off them for bits of work, and sleeps there most nights for the warmth. He’d seen it. Said it was the woman what did it. Raised the rock and brought it down hard.’
‘And the rest.’
Sam rubbed his nose hard on his sleeve. ‘He said he started peering because he heard them arguing like. When he looked, he said the girl was pulling away and shaking her head, but Fred was holding on to her hand and being all pleading and that’s when Mrs Mitchell picked a brick up and struck her.’
‘Did he not think to tell anyone?’ Jocasta asked.
Sam wrapped his thin arms around himself. ‘He was scared. Ran away for a few days, but it’s cold, so in the end he went back. He’s littler than me.’
Jocasta felt a pang of memory tickling her throat and thought of the rainy fell all those years ago, her trembling and confusion. She hunched her shoulders in the shadows.
‘You got a name for him? A promise to bide where he is?’ Molloy said.
‘Yes, sir. He is called Evan. And I gave him the rest of the sugar cane the cobbler’s wife bought for me, and a promise of another if he waits till I come again. He’ll bide for that’
VII.8
T
HOUGH THEY DID not as yet know the particulars, the household realised that Harriet and Crowther’s investigation into the affairs of His Majesty’s Opera House had reached some sort
of conclusion. That, and the arrival among them of Mr Daniel Clode made for something of a holiday atmosphere as they went in to dinner. It was one of those rare moments when it seemed everyone in the company was looking at each other with satisfaction and affection. The women, from little Lady Thornleigh to Mrs Service, looked beautiful, the men handsome and wise.
‘We received cards from Mr Harwood, Mrs Westerman,’ said Graves, pushing the game pie towards her over the tablecloth, and spilling gravy onto it in the process. ‘Manzerotti is to give a benefit tomorrow night, and all profits of the occasion are to go to the Foundling Hospital in Mademoiselle Marin’s name.’ Harriet helped herself to the food, but made no immediate comment. ‘I suppose,’ Graves continued, ‘that it is a civilised gesture. But it seems terribly quick.’ He examined the air in front of him, full of candlelight. ‘Perhaps they were afraid the town’s supply of yellow roses and paper would have become completely exhausted, were they to delay any longer.’
‘Perhaps,’ Harriet said mildly, and allowed herself to watch Clode and Rachel for a moment. Clode was talking to Crowther, or rather listening with furrowed brow as he encouraged Crowther to talk, and Rachel was making some remark to Mrs Service about the egg dishes, made with the latest consignment from Caveley, but their delicious consciousness of each other was touchingly clear. Harriet had a slight pang for Lady Thornleigh. The little girl loved Rachel dearly, but was likely to become rather quiet when Clode was in the room.
There was a sudden knocking at the street door, so loud it could not be ignored and conversation around the room fluttered to a halt. A door in the hall opened and closed and a voice, cracked and raised, bounced its way along the corridor and into the room.
‘I don’t give a damn if he’s at dinner. I need him now and I’ll have him!’
Lady Susan leaped excitedly to her feet. ‘It’s Molloy!’ she said, and ran to the double doors at the bottom of the table and threw them open. The party turned to see the man himself in the doorway, tall and slightly stooped in his greasy hat, occupied in knocking the hand of one of the footmen off his sleeve. Beside him stood a woman of middle age and comfortable stature. She wore a skirt made from a patchwork of many pieces of coloured material; blues and green mostly. There was something of the gypsy about her, though her colouring indicated an Englishwoman. As they stared, from behind her emerged a little boy of about Susan’s age, holding a grizzled terrier in his arms.
‘Mr Molloy! How do you do?’ said Susan happily. ‘And you have brought friends with you.’
Molloy touched the brim of his hat to her and, letting his eyes trace the faces in the room, said to Susan, out of the corner of his mouth, ‘How do, Your Ladyness.’ Susan giggled. ‘Now can you tell me, sunbeam, which of these gentlewomen is a Mrs Westerman. I have some business touching on her.’
Harriet stood up, her wrap settled in the crook of her arms. ‘I am Mrs Westerman.’
Molloy nodded to her. ‘I am Molloy, and though Graves there will tell you gladly I’m not normally allied with respectable company, he’ll also tell you I have a useful bone or two in my frame.’
Harriet looked over at Graves. He folded his napkin and gave her a slight nod, saying, ‘It was Molloy here who gave us a warning when it was most needful last year. He has made no attempt to capitalise on the help he gave as yet.’
Molloy’s face crumpled with a frown. ‘Don’t think I won’t yet, son. I save my favours and maybe add to them, is all.’ He turned his attention back to Harriet and, perhaps a little belatedly, took off his hat. ‘This Mrs Bligh here,’ he jerked his thumb behind him at the woman in the patchwork skirt, ‘has heard a man wish danger on a sailor called Westerman. Might that be your husband, ma’am? Some matter of treachery and information. Mention of the French with whom we are all at odds.’
Harriet felt very cold; she sensed the eyes of her friends on her. Crowther looked shocked and the muscles in his jaws clenched. Graves and Clode were intelligent men; she could almost feel them shaking up the incidents of the last days and weeks and seeing them settle into some pattern that chilled them. ‘It might.’
Jocasta stepped forward and the patchwork on her skirt rippled as if the individual fragments of cloth remembered when they had been in elegant rooms like this by wax candlelight, and were inclined to dance again. ‘I was where I shouldn’t have been, ma’am, for reasons there’s no need to waste air on the telling of. He’s a serious fella, this man – he said his boss wanted Westerman quieting, had heard he might know something he shouldn’t. Thin. Was wearing brown each time we’ve seen him, and I think he’s done for two little friends of this boy in my care and through my fault. Voice like a dove being throttled. Works by night. It’s dark now, and he don’t seem a man who delays. Is your man here?’ She was looking into the faces of the men round the table. None of them looked simple, or like a sailor to her eyes. ‘Can you guard him?’
Harriet steadied herself on the table. ‘Johannes. James. Highgate.’
There was a moment of silence, then Graves was suddenly on his feet and hallooing the household together.
‘Don’t bother with the carriage! Mounts for four! At once.’ The footman stood back from Molloy and hurried off. ‘Mrs Westerman, go and change your dress. Miss Trench, help her. Clode! There are a pair of pistols in the study. Susan, go look to the children. Mrs Martin?’ The housekeeper appeared swiftly in the doorway. ‘Would you take Mr Molloy and his friends to the kitchen, please, and see they are fed.’ Graves then turned to Crowther. ‘Sir. I presume you will ride with us?’ Crowther nodded, then as the party dispersed, calling for cloaks, boots and horses, Crowther turned to Mrs Service.
‘Might I trouble you to spend a few moments with me in the library, madam? I have some information I should like you to pass on to a friend.’
Harriet had flung herself into her riding clothes and was coming back down the stairs before a very few minutes were over. The street door was open, and already the horses were saddled and waiting. They seemed to have caught the urgency in the air and were stamping on the ground and shaking their great heads. Graves and Clode stood in the entrance hall, checking their pistols and then sheathing them under their coats. Crowther emerged from the library and took the riding cloak that was offered to him without comment. Harriet’s last image of the house, fleetingly caught as she was lifted uinto the saddle and took the reins, was of the dinner-table still laid. The candles and crystal, the food, and silverware all fine and shining.