The Masque of a Murderer (12 page)

The fifth letter was the most ebullient by far. He and Esther Grace had gotten married.
By her suggestion, we moved to the house in which I have been living. We have talked about selling everything and starting our life together, maybe even in the New World. I should hate to leave thee. I would very much like for thee and my sweet Esther to meet.

In the sixth letter, he seemed a bit sad, even apologetic.
I am sorry that Esther was unable to meet with thee. I should very much have liked her to make thy acquaintance. She was moved by the Lord to speak at the Devonshire Meeting. The movement of the Lord within us cannot be verily understood. I myself have been moved by the Lord to rid myself of my last possessions.

Thoughtfully, Lucy retied the string around the letters. Unfolding the sketch, she stared at the dead man resting against the column. She could not keep herself from whispering aloud the words that had been scrawled at the bottom of the sketch.
“This is the dandy I told you about. Set upon and killed.”

Even as she blew out the candle and climbed into her bed, her thoughts continued to swirl. Who was this man? Where had he been killed? Who had killed him? And perhaps most unsettling of all: Who had sent this message to Julia Whitby—and why?

8

“Hang on. Let me sell here for a b-bit,” Lucy said to the constable the next morning, trying to keep her teeth from chattering. Although it was early March, it was still one of the coldest days she could recall. Certainly, no spring in sight. She and Duncan were still a ways from Bishopsgate, but they’d come to a small market where people were peddling spices, soaps, and baskets. She had stopped in a spot that gave them some protection from the bitter chill, since no innkeeper would let her hawk her wares inside his establishment.

Not giving the constable a chance to disagree, Lucy began to rifle through her pack for a few pieces that she knew would sell easily.

“
The Constable Cozened!
” she read aloud before hastily stuffing it back in her pack, hoping Duncan had not heard the title. Glancing at another, she groaned. “
The Cuckolded Constable!
” She looked at another, her mortification growing. “
The Constable’s Cod-Piece!
Lach!” She swore. “I am going to kill him!”

Constable Duncan peered at the pieces with a wry smile. “I take it that Aubrey’s
other
devil packed your sack? I suspect these kinds of merriments are to his liking.”

She rolled her eyes. “I was still typesetting another piece, and Lach offered to put my sack together. He said he’d put in some that always sold well.” Sheepishly, she added, “These
do
sell well.”

“Especially if I’m nearby? I suppose that’s what he wanted. Perhaps I should stand here slack-jawed and stupid, so I can truly play the role of—what is it?” He looked at one of the penny pieces. “
The ‘Confounded’ Constable
?”

Lucy grinned. It was true that Lach had little admiration for the constable, or most authorities, for that matter. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

For the next thirty minutes, the constable watched her sell the pieces, but from a goodly distance away. Finally, when Lucy felt her sack had been significantly lightened, they were able to move. When they reached the Wiggins house in Bishopsgate a short while later, Lucy carefully hid her pack in a low hedge. It wouldn’t help to have the Wigginses question her presence at their door before she’d even had a chance to explain.

A smiling maid answered the door, returning shortly to the drawing room with Mrs. Wiggins, heavy into her confinement.

“My maid said you have a message for me?” Mrs. Wiggins asked.

Duncan stepped forward. “Not exactly. The message is for your friend Julia Whitby. Your mother thought she might be here.”

To Lucy’s dismay, Mrs. Wiggins paled and sank down in a soft cloth-covered chair. “Are you all right, mistress?” Lucy asked. “May I get you some water, or some other refreshment? Do you need assistance?”

The woman waved her hand, then dropped it onto her bulging belly. “No, I’ll be fine. I just felt a wave of dizziness. The baby is very active today.” She flushed slightly, with a glance at Duncan. Respectable women were not supposed to discuss their condition, especially in the presence of men.

“I remember my wife’s confinement,” Duncan said unexpectedly. “Resting a short spell would often help her.”

Lucy stared at him. She’d never heard the constable speak of a wife or child. When he met her gaze, his face was expressionless. She could not tell what he was thinking.

Anxiously, Lucy and Duncan waited in silence. When Mrs. Wiggins finally took a deep breath, her face had resumed a more healthy color. “I’m so sorry to tell you that I haven’t seen my dear friend Julia Whitby in quite some time. I was ever so puzzled when I received that urgent message from her parents. I did send a reply with the same messenger, saying I had not seen her, nor, truth be told, had I invited her to stay with me.” She looked from Lucy to Duncan. “What is going on? Why did her mother think she would be here?”

As she spoke, Lucy watched Mrs. Wiggins closely. The woman seemed genuinely anguished. She hated to distress her further, but she thought the woman might be able to shed some light on Julia Whitby’s disappearance.

“I’m afraid Miss Whitby has fled her parents’ home,” Lucy said quietly. “She left a letter saying that she was planning to stay with you.”

Tears welled in Mrs. Wiggins’s eyes. “I wish she had come to me.” She ran her hand along a porcelain vase on a low table next to her chair. “I knew something was bothering her, you see. I wanted to come and see her, but—” She waved expansively again toward her belly.

Duncan nodded. “Why do you think something was bothering her?” he asked.

“Because she wrote me a letter. I received it just three days ago, by messenger.”

The same day Julia had summoned her brother to come see her, Lucy thought. The same day her brother was struck by the cart.

Mrs. Wiggins continued. “She was concerned about her brother, but she would not say why.”

“Because—” Lucy began before Duncan cut her off.

“Because he was a Quaker?” Duncan asked blandly, darting a quick warning glance at Lucy.

Mrs. Wiggins didn’t see their exchange. She was still gazing sadly at the vase. “No, I do not think so. Something else.”

“Do you have the letter now?” Lucy asked. She knew that in many families, letters were passed from hand to hand, often until they were far gone from the intended recipient’s keeping. Some people, though, would use the extra paper for kindling, particularly in this cold winter.

To Lucy’s relief, Mrs. Wiggins nodded. “I do have it. I shall fetch it.”

When she returned with the letter, she handed it to the constable. Lucy could not resist peering over his arm to read the message as well.

“Dearest Elizabeth,”
Lucy read out loud, “
I so long to see you, not the least because of your
— What are those words?” She squinted, trying to make out Julia Whitby’s script, which was hurried and difficult to read.

The constable continued where Lucy had left off.
“Not the least because of your confinement. I hope you are well and in good spirits. I should very much like to see you, but I fear I have some business I must attend to first.”
He broke off. “Madam, are you all right?”

Mrs. Wiggins had closed her eyes. “Yes. Pray, continue.”

“Something has occurred, however, that I should not like to detail for you, given your present delicate condition. Suffice it to say, I am very concerned for my brother”—
here Lucy and the constable exchanged a glance before Duncan continued—
“and there is something pressing I must address. I pray you do not go into your travail before this unfortunate matter is resolved, for I should very much like to join you in your lying-in. Yours truly, etc., Julia Whitby
.
”

Duncan handed the letter back to her. “You have no idea about the matter to which she was referring?”

Mrs. Wiggins shook her head. “No, I wish I did. That’s how Julia was, even when we were children. Always on the secretive side. That was just her nature.” She placed the letter inside her bodice, beneath the ecru scarf that crisscrossed her chest. She patted the seat next to her. “Pray, sit.”

“So you must have known her brother, Jacob, then?” Lucy asked, sitting gingerly beside her. Duncan gave her a look before he stepped out of the room.
He must want to look around, to see for himself whether Julia Whitby was on the premises,
Lucy thought
.
She turned back to Mrs. Wiggins. “You grew up together?” she prompted.

Mrs. Wiggins rubbed her extended belly. “Yes, but I didn’t know him all that well. He was a few years younger than us, had his own tutors, went to Cambridge, and so on. I couldn’t have had more than half a dozen conversations with him in all the time I knew him. He was a little on the wild side, as most men are when they are young.” She lowered her voice, looking a bit mischievous. “Especially those university sorts. Not that we ladies are supposed to know of such things.”

Lucy paused. Although she had been about to ask Mrs. Wiggins another question, her words died on her lips as she pondered what the woman had just said. She’d heard enough bawdy tales about the scholars and tutors at Cambridge and Oxford to know that most did not comport themselves as they did in the company of ladies. Not for the first time she wondered how Adam had passed his time when not at his studies.

Duncan returned then, interrupting her thoughts. He seemed ready to leave, and there seemed little else of importance to learn from Mrs. Wiggins.

“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Wiggins,” he said. “If you do hear from Miss Whitby, will you please send me a note?” He gave the location of his makeshift jail on Fleet Street before they left. “And I will inform you, should we learn anything of her whereabouts.”

Once they were a few steps away from the Wiggins home, Lucy looked at Duncan expectantly. “Well?”

“Julia Whitby was not there, I am certain of that,” the constable replied. “I talked to the servants—they had not seen her. I do not think she was hiding there, either.”

“So she lied in the letter to her parents?” Lucy asked, shivering in the cold. “Where is she, then?”

Duncan shrugged. “Who knows? The question, of course, is whether Julia Whitby lied about where she was going and went somewhere else. Or did she truly intend to visit her friend and something—or someone—kept her from getting there?”

Since there was no answer to the question, they fell silent. As the bitter wind blew, instinctively they moved a bit closer together. Lucy’s nose was running, and her feet were hurting a bit more than usual, another side effect of the cold. She could not help but look longingly at a covered hackney cab as it drove by.

“Can you imagine being able to hire a hack anytime you wanted?” she asked. “At any time, anywhere you needed to go? Maybe I would never walk anywhere again. What about you?”

Duncan scoffed. “I need to be on the ground to perform my duties. So I prefer walking to riding. As, I imagine, so do you. Or would you not still be a bookseller if you were rich enough to travel everywhere by hack?”

Lucy giggled. “I could just hire someone to push me about in one of those wheeled chairs. I could bid him to stop whenever I reached a street corner I liked.”

Duncan glanced down at her, smiling slightly. “I could not see you in such a contraption. Or you could just marry well.” His hazel eyes grew suddenly intent. “Or perhaps if you marry, your husband will not want you to keep traversing the city, selling tracts.”

“Oh, no, I love being a bookseller!” She gulped. “I do not think my husband, if I had a husband, would ask me to stop.” Yet she knew that was not necessarily true.

“You know,” Duncan said, “after my father left the army, he became a merchant and then married my mother. For many years she helped him, at first just managing the accounts, but later, when he grew ill, she took on much of the business herself. I always admired their partnership.” He blinked and looked off.

Lucy wanted to touch his arm, but something kept her from doing so.

He looked back down at her. “A man is lucky indeed if he has a wife who brings some fortune into the marriage.”

That reminded her of something he had said earlier. “Constable Duncan, were you—are you—married? I thought you were not, but you mentioned your wife’s condition…?” Her voice trailed off.

The look he gave her was inscrutable. “I am not married now, but I was.”

Lucy looked down at the ground. His wife must have died, because a divorce was next to impossible for anyone to get. The Church was very clear on that point. She wondered if their child had died as well. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“It was a long time ago. When I was still in York.” He changed the subject. “I am ready for my noon meal.”

Lucy nodded, having been hearing little complaints from her own stomach as well. They walked the rest of the way in silence.

*   *   *

When they neared the jail, Hank, the bellman, hailed the constable. He’d obviously been keeping an eye out for him. “A body has been found, sir,” he said. He gestured to an older woman who had followed him out of the jail, a slight limp to her gait. “Found by this woman.”

Perhaps in her sixties, the woman was dressed as a widow, in all blacks and grays, with not a frill to be found on her woolen cloak or dress. Her hood was drawn close to her face to ward off the chill, but the eyes that peered out were dark and unafraid as she regarded the constable and Lucy. Not a Quaker, Lucy decided. Friends would not voluntarily approach the authorities unless they wished to be cast into jail.

Taking in her stance, Lucy grimaced when she realized that the woman was gripping a bell in her left fist. A searcher! One of those fearful older women who spent their days searching and calling for the dead, all to make a few pennies on every body found. They would inform the local priests about any deaths that had occurred in their parish, whether from Divine Providence or from another’s hand. “Bring out your dead!” they would call, ringing their bells. The parish priests would use the information to compile the weekly Bills of Mortality, to inform the public of all deaths that had occurred throughout London and its suburbs.