“I’d rather she stay here. I’ll talk to her, see what she wants to do.” This meant Coffen would be footing her bills at some no doubt fancy hotel.
Black was soon back, shaking his head. “All seems normal abovestairs. I’ll try the cellar.” He was off again, and soon back to tell them the keg of brandy was still there but someone had removed the cork. They ought to get the brandy out at least before Mrs. Filmore moved in.
“I’m going to tell Mrs. Filmore what happened,” Coffen said. “You’ll give Black a lift to the hotel, Corrie?”
“Yes, certainly,” she said.
“Lock up when you go, Black,” Coffen said, and handed him the key.
Before leaving, Black made a quick trip into the Brithelmston tavern for a word with Catchpole. The place was thinly populated. He didn’t order a drink but just asked Catchpole if he knew a woman calling herself Mrs. Filmore. Catchpole didn’t recognize the name but when he heard her description, he said, “Aye, I know who you mean. I saw her go into the house yesterday afternoon. I wondered what she was doing there. She’s harmless, Mr. Smith. A local trollop. She may take your friend for a few pounds, but it won’t last. She likes variety. She hasn’t the wits to think long-term.”
Black was relieved to hear it. He went to Marine Parade with Lady Luten to tell what he had learned. “It seems Mrs. Filmore is just a local trollop. I don’t know if she had anything to do with that business at Mr. Pattle’s house last night. I’ve been trying to figure that out, Luten. There was a strong whiff of brandy in the cellar and a wet glass. Someone had broached that keg. I’m wondering if the place was used to store the stuff. I daresay she could be working with the Gentlemen, since she’s a local woman of loose morals.”
“Whoever was there wasn’t looking for brandy hidden behind the wainscotting, or under the floorboards,” Corinne pointed out.
“That’s true, and there’s only the one keg belowstairs, but there’s a good deal of money involved in the trade, one way or t’other. P’raps the lads meet there to make arrangements, receive their pay, though that don’t account for the search either. Then there’s that tavern next door. That seems a likelier meeting spot, with the leader using the house as headquarters. Or it might have been some other sort of crook. A highwayman, for instance.”
“Highwayman? That’s not very likely,” Luten said, surprised at such an irrelevance from Black.
“Not just
any
highwayman,” Black said, and told them about his first visit to the tavern and Mad Jack’s disappearing stunt. “With the house so closeby, I began to wonder if he’d got out a window and hidden at Mr. Pattle’s house. I stopped by after I left the tavern and didn’t see anyone there. You’d think he’d go farther afield once he got out, and I don’t see why he’d tear the place apart either.”
“Isn’t it more likely something of value is hidden there, and someone’s after it?” Luten suggested.
“Mrs. Filmore?” Corinne said, looking to the expert. “Since she’s a local woman, she might know about it. Whatever
it
is.”
“The thought did occur to me. While she kept Mr. Pattle busy last night, her friends could have done their searching.”
“Let us hope they found what they’re after,” Luten said. “If she’s part of it, she might leave Coffen alone now.”
“She might,” Black agreed, “or she might realize she has a fat bird for easy plucking. He’s off to see her now. We’ll hear what she has to say.”
They didn’t have long to wait. Coffen soon joined them. “She’s gone,” he said, his blue eyes wide in astonished confusion. “Wasn’t at her hotel.”
Black gave a softened version of what he had learned from Catchpole, and what they had been talking about, intimating that poor Mrs. Filmore had fallen among thieves and been used by them.
“Poor soul,” Coffen said, shaking his head. “We’ve got to find her.”
“The place to start is the hotel she was staying at,” Luten said. “They might have noticed if someone was calling on her, if she left with someone.”
“I tried that,” Coffen said, turning a little pink around the ears. “She’d never been there, Luten. Wasn’t staying there at all.”
“But we wrote to her there,” Black reminded him. “She got your note setting up the appointment.”
Coffen shook his head. “She had arranged with the clerk to pick up her letter there, paid him something to handle it for her. He never saw her before or since. I just left her at the door last night. Seems she never went inside, or just stepped in and out again.”
After a short silence while they all sat with pleated brows, thinking, Luten said, “Did she say anything last night that might give us a clue where she might be, any friends hereabouts?”
“No, nothing. We were talking about the future. She was going to have the kiddies brought down from London. We were going to take them on a picnic. Tommy wanted to go swimming. That’s her boy, Tommy.”
The others exchanged a frustrated glance. Coffen spoke as if he still believed she was a widow from London. “You wouldn’t know her maiden name, or anything about her husband, what battle he was killed in?” Luten asked.
“No!” Coffen said angrily. “What difference does all that make now? She’s gone and we’ve got to find her.”
Corinne gave a tsk of impatience. “Don’t be a fool, Coffen. She was using you. She kept you busy last night while her friends took the place apart, looking for — something.”
Coffen just growled. “You don’t know her. If you’ve nothing sensible to say, I’m leaving. Come along, Black. We have work to do.”
Black cast a meaningful look at Corinne, shook his head and hurried out after his master. As they drove back to the hotel, Coffen said, “I’ve been thinking about Flora, the girl that was so eager to get in here. She mentioned her fellow, Henry. I wager they’re the ones that wrecked the place last night. She’s working in some shop where she said we could be in touch with her.”
“The Seaside Tourist shop. Her mama used to work for Bolger. She seemed to know the place. You think she knew something of value was hidden there? It’s possible, but of course she’ll deny it. I’ll go along with you.”
“I was going to ask you to go for me. I want to keep looking for Mary.”
“How? I don’t see where you can even start.”
“I’ll start at the Albemarle. That’s a decent hotel. It’s not the sort of place would take letters for folks they don’t know. That clerk knows more than he told me.”
“He’ll never admit it,” Black scoffed. “It would cost him his job.”
“He agreed to do it for money. He’ll tell me for the same reason.”
“You could be right,” Black said. “I’ll hire a hackney.”
“Take the curricle. It’s faster. Just drop me at the Albemarle and we’ll roast two birds with one stone.”
Prance would have called him to account for that mangled metaphor, but Black was not so demanding. “As you like,” he said.
Black had no trouble finding the tourist shop where Flora worked, but he had no lever to pry the information he wanted out of her. He was at a disadvantage, not knowing what was going on, or whether she was actually involved. Vague intimidation was the best he could come up with.
Flora was there behind the counter, straightening a collection of cheap pottery reproductions of the Prince’s pavilion. She looked up when he entered. When she recognized him she gave a guilty start. “Why if it isn’t Mr. Pattle’s friend. Does he want to hire me after all?” she asked in a breathless voice.
He ignored her question. “His house was broken into and searched last night. You wouldn’t know anything about that, I suppose?” he asked with awful irony.
“Me?” she said, recovering and putting on a good imitation of outraged innocence. “If he’d hired me like I wanted, this wouldn’t have happened. Whyever would I go and do a thing like that?”
“P’raps you were looking for something,” he said with a knowing stare.
She returned stare for stare. “What do you mean? Looking for what?”
“I think you know what I mean, miss. You’ll not do it again if you know what’s good for you. And it wouldn’t do you any good anyhow.”
“Why? Did he —” She came to a jerky stop, as if to prevent herself from saying something unwise. A pair of tourists came into the shop and began looking over the merchandise. Knowing she was no longer alone with Black bolstered Flora’s confidence. “Did you want to buy one of these pavilions?” she asked in a cool, polite voice.
He couldn’t quiz her with customers present but he gave her one last menacing glare. “No, thank you. I don’t collect junk,” he said, and left. He felt sure Flora was the one who had searched the house, and that she had been looking for something valuable. But she hadn’t found it! “Did he find it?” was what she was going to say, but she caught herself in time.
The discovery Coffen made at the Albemarle was far from cheerful news. He flipped a sovereign through his fingers as he questioned the clerk about Mrs. Filmore. “It’s pretty important that I find her, and in a hurry,” he said. “I’m hoping you can remember something that might help me.”
The clerk watched the moving circle of gold like a fox watching the henhouse. “Now that you mention it, I believe she did ask me to forward any messages to a certain address,” he said. He looked up at Coffen, an eyebrow raised, then looked again at the coin.
Coffen’s fingers closed around it. “It’s yours if you can remember it,” he said.
Without further ado the clerk reached under the counter and drew out a piece of paper. “You’re in luck,” he said. “Most of the alleys in the Lanes don’t have names, but this one has. It’s Cherry Street, next to Morrison’s fish shop. He buys up what the hotels don’t want.” He even drew a little map.
Coffen snatched the paper, flipped him the coin and left at a rapid gait, wondering why Mary had pretended she was staying at the Albemarle. Probably just wanted him to think well of her, poor soul. She wouldn’t be a woman to squander money on her own comfort when she had two kiddies to raise on an officer’s half pay. Just because some tavern keeper mean-mouthed her didn’t mean he was right. Even if she happened to live in Brighton that didn’t mean the rest of her story was false.
The unsavoury Lanes district was known by Coffen. He was glad he wasn’t driving his curricle for street urchins to wreck, or for horse thieves to make off with his gray prads. He wanted to hear what Black had learned and returned to the hotel to await him. His heart afire with good intentions, he decided to take Mary some more money so she could really stay at the Albemarle. As he headed to the front door, his pockets jingling, he met Black coming in.
“I found her,” Coffen announced. “Got her address and a map right here. She had the clerk forward my note to her. Couldn’t afford the Albemarle, poor girl.”
“If she’s a local lass, she didn’t have to stay at a hotel, Mr. Pattle,” Black pointed out, but didn’t press the matter. “I may be on to something as well.” He reported his story.
“You see, I told you Mary had nothing to do with it,” Coffen crowed. “It was Flora and her boyfriend that searched the house.”
“It looks that way, but the important point, Mr. Pattle, is that there
is
something valuable in the house, and they didn’t find it last night, for Flora all but asked me if we’d found it.”
“Good work, Black. We’ll think about that later. Now I’ve got to find Mary.”
“I’ll go with you.”
Coffen was in two minds about this. He wanted to be alone with Mary, but there was no denying something was amiss. The clerk had definitely told him Mary picked up his note herself the first time, then admitted he’d forwarded it to her. Why would he have lied about it if she hadn’t asked him to? In other words, she wanted to keep her address from him. Her wanting that walk on the beach late at night was odd too. It was damp and chilly there, yet she’d let on to enjoy it, even when he suggested a couple of times that they go for a late night snack. And she was an excellent trencherman.
She’d asked him more than once what time it was, almost as if she had some other appointment to keep. What if she
was
mixed up with some undesirables? Not that she’d be helping them willingly, but it was just possible they were forcing her against her will. P’raps they’d got hold of Tommy and were threatening to do him some harm.
If it had been anyone but a pretty woman who made a great fuss over him he would have realized in an instant that this was foolishness, but he wanted Mary to be what he thought she was, and so he made himself believe her innocent, even if she had told him a few harmless fibs. And if a gang of roughians had her, then Black was not only welcome but necessary.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Best hire a hackney. We’d have trouble finding the place in the Lanes.”
The hackney delivered them to a large, tumbledown rooming house next door to a fish market. The whole street reeked from the decaying remains of fish. Flies and cats and ragged children were everywhere.
“This isn’t the sort of place a decent woman would live, Mr. Pattle.”
“She likely just hired a room for the night. Someone might have put her on to it,” Coffen said, with more hope than belief, as he ducked a flying fish head one of the urchins pelted at him.
The blowzy looking woman who answered the door reminded Coffen of that awful woman in a play Prance took him to.
Beggars Opera,
it was called.
Thieved Opera
would have been a better name for it. Her hair was falling down from under a dirty mobcap, her slatternly body bulging under a filthy apron.
She removed a pipe from between her brown teeth with surprisingly dainty though dirty hands and hollered, “What do you want?”
“I’m looking for Mrs. Filmore. I heard she had a room here,” Coffen said.
“You heard wrong. She ain’t here.”
Black stepped forward. “We don’t mean her any harm, mother,” he said with an ingratiating smile. “Come now, we know Mary lives here.”
“Ah,
her,
is it? You mean Mary Scraggs. She goes by different names. She never come home last night. Her cat’s bawling fit to deafen an auctioneer.”
“She has a cat?” Coffen asked in confusion. Mary hadn’t mentioned a cat.