The Debutante's Code, page 20
Lady Juliette had fit into his embrace perfectly, and he chided himself for even thinking such thoughts when she was clearly in distress.
Her wound appeared superficial, though her phobia did not.
“How did this happen?”
“We were set upon.” Righteous indignation colored Miss Montgomery’s words. “Three men, and one of them had a knife. They pushed us into the alley and demanded we give them the green dragon Juliette just purchased as a gift for her father. What is London coming to? Housebreakers, thieves, ruffians. We were accosted in broad daylight in a respectable part of the city. Something must be done about the lawless element.”
The words seemed strange on her tongue, but Daniel suspected she was quoting her father. Mr. Montgomery had said something similar. Several somethings, as a matter of fact.
“Can you describe the men?” He kept hold of Lady Juliette’s wrist, firmly but gently, where it lay on his thigh, and it wasn’t unpleasant. She smelled of rose blossoms. Not just any roses, but spring roses after a long winter. The kind that made a man glad he was alive.
Lady Juliette stirred, taking a deep breath. “One of them was called Barney. He was the one with the knife. Blue eyes, reddish-brown hair. And missing a front tooth.”
Daniel’s senses perked. “Was there another one with a sap? Short fellow with pockmarked skin?”
“A sap?” Agatha asked.
“A short leather-wrapped stick with a loop around his wrist? A cosh or a cudgel?”
“Yes,” Juliette said as Agatha nodded. “But neither of them were the leader. He was tall and thin as a park fence rail. They were all dirty and ragged, but the leader was filthy.” Her nose wrinkled, and her mouth twisted. “He demanded the jade dragon.”
The gears in Daniel’s mind meshed and clicked. “I believe you ladies have encountered Dirty Dave Figg. His associates are Barney Messenger and Ratter. If Ratter has a Christian name, I’ve never heard it. He used to be a ratter before he turned to criminal pursuits. They’re getting bolder if they’ve ventured out of the rookery at St. Giles into Chelsea. They’re usually found swilling gin in a pub along the Oxford Road.”
“What’s odd is”—Miss Montgomery leaned forward against the rocking of the carriage—“that dirty one said he had been sent for the dragon and wasn’t supposed to return without it.”
Lady Juliette jerked, and her hand came up as if to stop her friend’s speech, but Miss Montgomery either didn’t see the gesture or ignored it.
“How did they know Juliette had purchased it? They wouldn’t have been allowed inside the auction house, not in their state.”
Daniel pounced on the information. “They said specifically they wanted the dragon. It wasn’t a random robbery?”
“Perhaps the man I was bidding against brought insurance against not winning?” Lady Juliette offered. “He had them wait outside the auction house to steal what he couldn’t buy?”
That was possible, though improbable. There hadn’t been much time between that man losing the bid and the robbery. Though the man had left before Lady Juliette. Had he been giving instructions to his henchmen?
“That makes no sense,” Agatha offered. “The clerk told us the other bidder was Sir Wilfred Barr, and he was bidding for the British Museum. If he had the piece stolen from you, he certainly couldn’t put it on display at the museum, or everyone would know he’d come by it dishonestly.”
Again Juliette made a cutting-off motion with her uninjured hand, but it was too late. Why was she so desperate to keep her friend silent?
And how did what he’d learned from Lady Juliette and Miss Montgomery fit with what the auction house manager had told him?
Chapter 10
JULIETTE SAT AT HER DRESSING table and eyed the neatly wrapped bandage on her right wrist. Though Agatha had begged her to send for a physician, Juliette had asked Mrs. Dunstan to clean and bind the wound. Not even to herself would she admit she didn’t want a doctor for fear he would say she needed stitches.
Now that the wound had stopped bleeding, she was clearheaded and it was time to assess her options.
If only Uncle Bertie were here to advise her … or to forbid her to go on the mission she had set for herself tonight. She would go alone, as she should have done today. Agatha, while a lovely friend, had proven a liability.
Why did she have to be so chatty? Why had she shot down Juliette’s alternate theory of the crime and pointed Mr. Swann in the direction Juliette least wanted?
Juliette had sensed his mind working, taking in the information Agatha had spilled like an ewer. He was intelligent and an experienced investigator, and he had to be gathering all the bits and putting them together as a road map to the answers he sought.
But Juliette was intelligent too, and she had more of the pieces of the puzzle than he did. She knew the reason artwork was disappearing. She knew where the stolen items were now, and she had the list of the rest of the art that contained the code.
Someone out there had sent those miscreants to steal the jade statue, so they must have at least a partial list of the artwork too. The same person who killed Leonidas? And Mr. Selby?
The notion made tonight’s mission both necessary and urgent, and she should stop dithering and get on with it. She went downstairs to the breakfast room, where she’d asked dinner to be served. No sense eating alone in the vast dining room, and she didn’t want to have to change for the meal either.
“Mrs. Dunstan, thank you for your help today. I am sorry you were involved in such unpleasantness.” Not the least of which was the detective’s treatment of her housekeeper. He’d ignored the woman’s existence, even speaking about her rather than to her.
“See that your housekeeper sends for the physician,” he’d said when he’d delivered them home.
Mrs. Dunstan had been standing right there, but she might have been a potted palm for all the notice the detective had given her.
It was a blot on his copybook, and it disappointed Juliette out of all proportion. She wanted him to be a better man. She wanted him to be as noble as he seemed at first. Which was ridiculous. Why should she care about the character of a police officer, particularly one she was attempting to outwit?
Eating quickly, she ran through her plan for the night, and before she lost her nerve, she went up to the War Room to prepare.
Along one of the walls, cabinets held a wide and varied wardrobe and disguises of all types—wigs, false teeth, skin patches, dresses, suits, shoes, hats. Everything one could need to transform oneself into someone unrecognizable.
It amazed her anew at what her parents had kept secret from her for so long. Would she get the chance to know them, to discuss all of this, to work alongside them someday in the future? Or would she forever have to discover things about them after the fact if they never returned from their mission?
Uncle Bertie had said disguises were something for the advanced spy, and she would get to those lessons much, much later.
“‘Needs must when the devil drives,’ Uncle Bertie,” Juliette muttered. She sorted through the clothes, taking out a dark-green dress of plain muslin, many times patched and wearing thin in places. She added a dingy cap trimmed with wilted lace, a pair of sturdy boots in need of a polish, and a tatty shawl of brown wool. She hoped she could pass for a charwoman on her way home from work.
She then turned to a cabinet her uncle had declared she was even less prepared for than the disguises closet.
The doors were heavy, because each held an iron rack fastened to the inside. Tugging them open, she studied the array of weaponry at her disposal. Knives, pistols, chains, blatant and obvious, but also lesser known menaces like sharpened stars of metal for throwing, and a glove studded with brass spikes. There were spring-loaded knives, pistols that attached to sleeve holsters, and a small rack of glass vials that contained she knew not what.
She shuddered and selected a small knife that fit into the pocket of her dress.
Venturing into a rookery at night had to rate as one of the most nonsensical things she had ever attempted. Neither the tomfoolery that she’d gotten up to at boarding school, nor the rudimentary lessons she’d been given thus far into spycraft, had prepared her for arming herself to go in search of thieves in their home patch.
But—she studied her reflection in the full-length mirror—if she wanted to enter into the family business, and if she wanted her parents’ identities as spies to remain secret from foreign governments, she had no choice. She had to retrieve what she had lost.
Her mother wouldn’t shirk this duty just because she was scared, and neither would Juliette.
Perhaps tomorrow she would present Uncle Bertie with both the jade dragon and a tale of her bravery.
And perhaps you are the biggest fool in Christendom.
Cold wind sliced through the thin shawl, and she rued having to leave her heavy cloak at the house as she ventured out on the street. Her cheeks stung, and her nose burned. The lace cap she wore offered no protection against the chill. Fog hung in the air, a mist so thick you could almost drink it, creating fuzzy halos around the braziers and streetlamps.
Tucking her hands inside the shawl, she put her head down and hurried on. It was half eleven and dark as pitch between the small puddles of light that came from behind the window glass of houses along the road. The weight of the dagger in her pocket thumped against her leg as she walked. She’d say one thing for the disguise cupboard. The shoes she wore might not look like much, but they were comfortable and suitably heavy if she should need to kick someone.
Kick someone. She shook her head. A fortnight ago she would have been shocked to even think such a thing, and now she considered the skill a boon?
The neighborhoods changed the farther she walked, from fancy townhouses and beautifully tended squares to row houses and then tenements. Shops crowded together with narrow fronts and small windows, and upper stories hung over the street, blocking the moonlight.
Detective Swann had said the men she sought were often found in gin houses along the Oxford Road. But which one? Could she slip into such places searching for the right men?
She had no notion of accosting them, but only to follow them to their place of residence, wait until all was quiet, and break in to get the jade dragon back. If it was still there. Please don’t let them have handed it off to whoever sent them after it in the first place.
Was God listening, or had He abandoned her like her parents had, trusting her to find her own way through this thicket of skullduggery?
A creature scuttled across the alley near her, and she choked down a scream. What had sounded like a reasonable course of action in the warmth of the townhouse now seemed madness. What had she been thinking? It wasn’t too late to abandon her plan.
A lamplighter strolled near, his torch over his shoulder, a can of whale oil dangling from his hand. He didn’t look at her, and she realized that in this outfit, in this neighborhood, she was nearly invisible.
A strange sensation, since she was used to being noticed. Even as a child, because of who her parents were, people had shown deference, acknowledged her, or at the very least had been curious.
It was an odd feeling, and yet a wee bit freeing, to be someone else for a while.
Litter scudded the street, and she wrinkled her nose as a musty, dank smell came from a dilapidated building. People passed her, but they kept their heads down, not meeting her eyes, and she realized she would stand out if she didn’t do the same.
Eeriness crept over her. Was someone following her? She heard no footsteps, but the sense of eyes on her, of being observed, but in a menacing way, prickled the back of her neck. Gooseflesh that had nothing to do with the temperature flashed along her skin.
Don’t speed your footsteps. Stay calm. It’s probably nothing.
Ahead, a sign squeaked on its chains over a scarred door. The Anchor and Lamb. A gin house? Light spilled from the front window, but the fog and darkness swallowed it quickly. As she neared, she dashed a look over her shoulder.
Something moved in the shadows several yards behind her, but what? Was it her imagination, which had been working far too hard from the moment she left the house? Or perhaps someone going innocently about their business?
Her mouth dry, she reached for the door handle.
“Get out. Go away. You don’t belong here.” A beggar woman stepped out of the narrow space between the pub and the building beyond. Her Irish accent was thick, and she brandished a stick. “This is my patch.” The muted light from the window fell across the woman’s face. Filthy hair hung in her eyes, and a large wart stuck out on the tip of her nose. As she stepped close, Juliette retreated, but the stench of the woman’s clothes swirled around her thicker than the fog.
The beggar raised a gnarled hand, long nails ready to gouge. “Be gone, Oi said!” She let out a shriek that curdled the blood. Juliette put up her hands to ward off the woman. Surely someone inside the pub had heard the scream. Wouldn’t they come to her aid? But the door remained stubbornly closed.
Juliette’s heart caught in her throat, and she dodged the first swing of the stick and wasted no time getting away. The gruesome cackling wrapped around her and propelled her down the street away from the woman. Grabbing up her hem, she ran, but though she abandoned the area the woman considered “her patch,” the beggar did not give up the chase. She seemed to be almost herding Juliette with her pursuit.
Juliette’s feet pounded the cobbles, and she marveled that her pursuer could keep up. The sturdy shoes she had fancied would serve her well now weighed several stones, and a stitch developed in her side. Why wouldn’t the woman cease her chasing?
Up ahead, the lights from the Oxford Road shone in blurred globes. She was nearly out of the rookery. But a man stepped out of a doorway and stood square on the pavement. If Juliette continued, she’d run straight into him. His arms came up, and she knew he meant to grab her. At the last moment, she ducked, swerved, and ran down a side street.
Ahead, light spilled onto the pavement from an open door. The sign over the entrance showed a severed pig’s head on a barrel and the script The Hog’s Head. A man in a threadbare coat leapt from the doorway just as Juliette arrived, and two men in pursuit barreled after him. The second man collided with Juliette, his shoulder crashing into hers, sending her staggering into the street.
After leaving Lady Juliette at her townhouse, Daniel had flagged a coach, ordering the jarvey to speed along to Bow Street. Lady Juliette seemed much more in control of her faculties. Her wrist would be sore for a few days, but it should heal quickly.
He put his hand over his eyes. When had he last slept? He couldn’t remember. The last thing he had imagined himself doing was coming to the aid of a damsel in distress like some overblown chivalric knight.
And to rescue the young woman who had stalked the edges of his thoughts for days … madness.
Not to mention encountering Mrs. Dunstan, his mother, crowded into a carriage with him, each trying to ignore the other as best they could. Her from indifference, and he from anger.
She looked well. Better than when she’d thrust him away as a youngster. A nice dress, a nice bonnet, smooth skin, and clear eyes. He remembered her as thin and drawn with worry, always keeping her head down, never speaking until spoken to when she worked as a maid. But she had been light and happy and caring when they were alone. Which made her betrayal all the worse.
His mother had made certain he had food, even if she went hungry. That he had a place to sleep, clothes to wear. She’d worked long hours, never shirking, never complaining, but it must have rankled, having to care for him when other women on her same wage scale had only themselves to see to, and they were allowed to live in the big house free of charge. His mother had rented a cottage out of her meager wages, because no children could live in the servants’ quarters, especially not by-blows like him.
She must have been thrilled to be shut of him when the mysterious offer had come. The letter had arrived one day, and the next he had been on the mail coach, heading to a boys’ school in Kent. Barely time for him to plead with her not to send him away, but enough time for him to realize she couldn’t wait for him to go.
The dictates of the agreement were etched into his mind, especially the one that said he was allowed no contact with his mother. It might have been painful once, but now he had no issue with the requirement. He didn’t want to speak with the woman who had rejected him.
He shut the door on those memories. Focus on the case at hand.
The carriage rocked to a stop in front of the magistrate’s court, and he tossed a coin to the driver as he hurried up the stairs.
Ed met him in the hallway.
“I was giving a report to Sir Michael. Wasn’t much, but he was asking.”
“How did he take it?”
“Said we had more negatives than positives. We’d ruled out plenty of people, but we hadn’t ruled in anyone.”
“Perhaps that is about to change. Can we use one of the interview rooms? I want to walk through the case, and I want privacy.” Daniel unbuttoned his coat. “Owen, bring paper, ink, and pushpins to room C.”
For a moment, it appeared young Wilkenson was going to refuse, but his insubordination would only go so far. With a pinched mouth and sullen stare, he turned on his heel and marched away.
Daniel went to his desk, hung up his coat, and piled papers into a stack. “I want to break down the case as we know it and narrow the suspects. I have more information, and I want to see what you think of it.”
Ed gathered the pages from his desk and followed Daniel into interview room C, which boasted the largest table.
“The manager of the auction house was not keen on talking about his clients. I had to threaten a warrant for his records before he divulged. I gather they’re known for their confidentiality, and their clients, buyers and sellers can remain anonymous if they wish.”
“What did he tell you?”
“There was only one item up for auction today that came from Turner and Rathbone. Mr. Selby himself delivered it to Barrett’s a week ago, and he was eager to get it in the earliest auction.”
