Black and Prance were horrified at such gall, but Luten said, “Excellent! No one would think of looking for him there. We’ll stash him in under cover of darkness tonight, and let him out in twenty-four hours.”
As Luten approved of the plan, Prance decided it must be acceptable. “We shall require masks,” he said.
“Why?” Coffen asked. “We know who he is, and no one will see him if the job’s done right.”
“Masks, plural,” Prance explained. “For us, not him.”
“Ah, right. Good thinking.”
“Can you fashion us a set of masks, Prance?” Luten asked.
“No problem, if Corrie can supply me with some sturdy but not too stiff material, preferably black, and some ribbons to hold them on. How many do we want? Four?”
“Make it five,” Corinne said. “I’ll need one too. I have ribbons, and I’ll find some material for the masks in the attic. Will you come up with me, Reg? You can hold a candle, while I scrounge in trunks.”
After a little discussion as to how to manage the abduction, Luten said, “I’ll knock on the door of the cottage. Cripps doesn’t seem to have servants. He opened the door himself to Jasper. When he answers, we’ll nab him. We’ll have to barge in fast. He’ll try to shut the door when he sees the masks. Try not to speak, especially you and Black, Coffen. He might recognize your voices. He’ll suspect it’s you, of course, but if he doesn’t see your faces and doesn’t hear you speak, he’ll have uphill work making a positive identification.”
“Where is Norval’s house, Luten?” Black asked. “P’raps I should take a run over and just make sure it’s empty. They might have spared one servant to come on ahead.”
“It’s just two houses down,” Corinne said. “We’re neighbours. And it’s a corner house, so as the Aikers, the neighbours on the other side, aren’t here yet, no one should see you. The beach across the road is a bathing beach. There won’t be anyone there at night.”
“Right or left when I leave here?” Black asked.
“Turn left. It’s the house with lead lions at the door.”
When Black had left and Corinne and Prance gone up to the attic, Luten turned to Coffen. He could see his friend was worried. “How did the meeting with Jasper go?”
“Nothing unusual. He asked about pistols and Black let on I was borrowing a pair from a friend. He tried to frighten us a bit by saying to make sure we had a sawbones standing by, for Cripps is a deadly shot.”
“Take my pistols when you go to meet him tomorrow. We want everything to appear that you think Cripps is coming, so take the usual steps. Have you ever attended a duel, Coffen?”
“No, but I know about the twelve paces. A fellow who was winged in one told me he forgot to turn up his lapels over his shirt front. It had something to do with not making a good target. I don’t see, myself, that it would make much difference.”
“It’s a barbaric business. I’m glad we got it outlawed. Now if we could only get it stopped.”
“He forced me into it!”
“I didn’t mean you, Coffen. I know well enough this is Cripps’s doings. A gentleman can’t ignore a slap in the face.”
“I wish now I’d just hauled off and darkened his daylights. Anyhow, I want to thank you for your help, Luten. Daresay I wouldn’t be alive tomorrow without you. It makes me think that whatever Cripps is after at my house, it must be demmed valuable. I know we think the Czarina’s diamonds are there, but don’t it seem a bit hard, killing a man for a set of diamonds?”
“It does indeed, but people have killed for less.”
“I could see it if he was poor, but he ain’t. He dresses in style, lives in a house, not some cheap room. Don’t seem short of money. Has a fine mount and a carriage as well, for Jasper said they’d be going in a carriage tomorrow. Or p’raps he’s supplying the carriage himself. Anyhow a fellow with his pockets to let can’t afford a house and a mount.”
“Wasn’t there some talk of his being a Captain Sharp?”
“That’s just in the tourist season. The locals won’t sit down with him. Myself, I never knew a fellow who got rich that way
without
cheating. He must have some other way of making money, and I have to wonder if my house ain’t involved, though Mrs. Partridge did say he had taken up with some rich friend. That’d be Jasper.”
“Yes,” Luten said. “I wonder if Bolger had other things hidden in his house, as well as the diamond necklace. Money, I mean, or other valuable jewels.”
“Or it could have to do with the smuggling. Scraggs, you recall, lives at that shady tavern right next door.”
“I know. And the infamous Mad Jack does his disappearing act at the tavern as well. We must search the house again. It seems Cripps is willing to do anything to get his hands on the place.”
“I feel surer by the day he’s the one killed Mary, did it because I had told her she could rent it.”
“I agree. He’s obviously a man without a conscience. I don’t feel badly for playing this stunt on him.”
“Not a bit of it,” Coffen agreed, “though I hope I don’t look like a coward.”
Prance and Corinne came down from the attic carrying an ancient black bombazine gown and Corinne’s sewing box. They settled by the grate to fashion the masks. Black was soon back to announce that all was quiet at Norval’s house and the house next door. A couple were walking on the beach, but they didn’t seem interested in anything but each other. “They wouldn’t have noticed if the place was on fire,” he said.
“As soon as our disguise is done, we’ll go to Market Street,” Luten said. “We’ll take along pistols, but try not to use them.”
“I’ll be waiting for you at Norval’s place,” Corinne said. “I want to select a spot for Cripps.”
“You can’t go there alone!” Luten cried.
“Of course not. I’ve made a mask for Evans as well. He asked me earlier if there was anything he could do. He mentioned the key is a bit tricky and offered to come with me. He’s happy to do it.”
Black scowled at the news that Evans had horned in on the case, but said nothing. Luten consoled himself that at least she wasn’t planning to “help” them with the abduction. It was agreed that Prance’s anonymous carriage would be used to abduct Cripps.
“What if Flora’s with him?” Coffen asked. “Do we take her along as well? We can hardly leave her behind. She’d run straight to Brown.”
Black said. “I can tie her up as well. Leave her in the house. P’raps lock her in the cellar.”
“Do a good job on Cripps,” Prance said. “If he manages to get free before six, he’ll go to meet Coffen.”
Black just smiled. “Oh he won’t get free till we set him free,” he said. “I had a short stint in the Navy and know a thing or two about knots. We’ll strip him and take away his clothes as well.”
“Norval would have plenty of clothes in the house,” Luten said. “Of course a portly, elderly gentleman’s clothes wouldn’t fit him, but –”
“I doubt that popinjay would appear in public without his fancy duds,” Black scoffed. “However, I’ll make sure he’s tied up right and tight.”
“He won’t starve to death, will he?” Coffen said, and was greeted by jeers. “I mean to say, if we’re leaving him there till tomorrow night...”
“You don’t starve to death in twenty-four hours, Mr. Pattle,” Black said.
“It feels like it.”
“About snatching Cripps,” Black said. “Are we likely to be seen? What sort of a neighbourhood is this Market Street?”
“Respectable but not affluent,” Luten said. “I don’t think anyone will be about at two in the morning. We have enough time that we can wait till the street is empty. We’ll do it as quietly as possible. Gag him before we take him out. Chuck him into the carriage and go. You’d best send for your rig now, Prance. And ask Pelkey to leave the stable as quietly as possible, in case Brown is asking questions later. Since your name was used as Coffen’s second, Brown will be suspicious.”
“ ‘Oh what a tangled web we weave.’ I shall inform Pelkey he took the carriage out for his own amusement, without my knowledge, and reward him accordingly.”
Black just sat in silent wonder at the carrying on of the upper class. Everything was easy for them, even crime.
Brighton’s season was not yet at its peak. Only a few of the summer merry-makers who kept the roads busy till dawn were to be seen. As Pelkey drove the carriage to the less desirable residential area he met only an elderly man out walking his dog, and one servant running at break-neck speed, perhaps seeking a doctor for a dying master or sick child. Or possibly running off with whatever of his master’s valuables he could put in his pockets. On Market Street, when they reached it, a pale white moon floating in the star-sprinkled sky overhead shone on the cobblestones of an empty street.
“Looks like he’s gone to bed,” Black said, peering out the window to examine Cripps’s modest wooden cottage.
“He’ll be out like a light the night before a duel,” Prance assured them. He had never fought a duel himself, but had heard from friends that the only way to endure the eve of a duel was to drink oneself into a stupor, preferably in the company of one or more friends. They knew Jasper had left, so Cripps would be alone. And he’d already been drinking when he made the challenge. Even if he felt he could handle Coffen, there was always the possibility of some mischance. “We may have to rouse him out of his bed.”
“No, I tell a lie,” said Black, who hadn’t been paying any heed to Prance. “There’s one light abovestairs. That’s good. The neighbours might hear if we had to knock loud enough to wake him up.”
“Get your masks on,” Luten said. “Prance, you get your pistol out but stand at the carriage door. Black and I will take Cripps. Remember, not a word. Coffen, you stay behind us so he doesn’t recognize your build, but be ready to jump in if it looks like he’s getting away.”
When they were all masked and Prance armed, they went to the door. Luten gave one firm rattle of the door knocker. In no longer than it takes for a man to run downstairs, they heard footsteps approaching from within. It seemed he was not yet dead drunk. The door was flung open, and there stood Flora Snoad — in her nightgown, the hoyden, with her hair all tousled. Not a sign of Cripps. That soon the first plan had to be abandoned, for they’d have to speak to ask her to call Cripps.
The next thing that went wrong was that she opened her mouth and began screaming fit to raise the dead and tried to close the door before they got inside. Black reached out his long arms and grabbed her, covering her mouth with one hand. Luten, at Black’s heels, gagged her with the gag they had prepared for Cripps and dragged her further into the relative privacy of the house. Coffen came uncertainly into the hallway. He noticed she was taking in everything she could of their appearance, no doubt to describe them to Brown. At least she couldn’t see much in the darkness. Lord, now what were they to do with her?
Prance, seeing things were not going as planned, came running forward. They all looked to Luten for instructions, and he hardly knew what to do. It went against the pluck to manhandle a woman as they were doing, yet they’d have to take her as well. And they shouldn’t keep her and Cripps in the same room. Two, working on each other’s binding, had a better chance of escape than keeping them apart.
Before any decision could be taken, Cripps called down from the upper story. “Who is it, Flora?” So much for his being drunk! Getting no reply, he came running downstairs in his nightshirt. Before he got halfway down, he saw what was afoot and ran back up, abandoning his beloved to four masked men, one of them pointing a pistol at her.
Luten ran around to the rear of the house, thinking there must be a back staircase, and Cripps would use it to get out the back door. He waited a minute, figuring Cripps was grabbing his trousers and boots, and likely a pistol as well. Soon enough it was borne in on him that he’d been outwitted again. He heard a light thump from the side of the house. By the time he got around to it, Cripps was out the window and several yards away, running hell for leather in his nightshirt. Luten took after him, but Cripps disappeared. The patch of his white nightshirt seemed to melt into the surrounding shadows.
There were bushes and trees behind the cottage and houses on either side. He could have darted in any direction. Luten ran to the right, but no bushes swayed to tell of Cripps’s passing. No flash of white, no sound of running footsteps. He tried another direction with the same result. The scoundrel had got clean away, leaving them with an unwanted female abductee. They couldn’t leave her behind to run straight to Brown. And there was no point thinking they could use her to lure Cripps out of hiding when he had abandoned her to save his own skin.
Luten returned to the front of the house, noticing in passing that a rope dangled from the open window abovestairs. Cripps must have had it already tied to the bed or dresser, ready to bolt. Very likely this wasn’t the first time he’d had to use it. When Luten reached the front, he found the door closed.
Glancing to the carriage he saw there was no one in it. He pushed the cottage door open and went inside. Dim light from the open doorway of the main room showed Flora wriggling and kicking and making incoherent noises through her gag while one of the men — Black it looked like, held her and Prance was tying a bandage around her eyes.
Luten assumed a gruff voice and said, “Carriage.” Black scooped her up in his arms and they got her, squirming and kicking like a wild animal, into the carriage. Coffen got in behind them to bind her hands and feet, then left her with Black and joined Luten and Prance outside the carriage.
They spoke in low voices. “Cripps got clean away?” Coffen asked.
“Out the bedroom window and vanished in the darkness.”
“We can’t let her go. She’ll run straight to Brown.”
Luten had already racked his brains for a better solution, but in the end said, “We’ll take her to Norval’s place.”
They did this, and as Black said later, he’d as soon have traveled with a carriage full of wild cats. At Norval’s house, Corinne and Evans came out to meet them, masked and carrying dark lanterns. She just stared to see Black carry out not Cripps but a struggling woman, whom she soon recognized as Flora. Evans was positively dumbfounded.