A Broken Vessel (37 page)

“And he believed you?”

“Don’t I tell you, there are no limits to what I can make him believe! He helped me escape. Made himself very unpopular in our village, I’m afraid! That’s why he and my mother moved to London, soon after I came here. He found me again by putting discreet advertisements in the newspapers. ‘W.F. would be glad to hear from C.F.’—that sort of thing. I met with him from time to time. I didn’t see any point in cutting the connexion. Who knew when it might not be useful? Of course he kept it a secret from my mother that he’d found me. I was still wanted for murder in our village, and she would have thought it her pious duty to turn me over to the authorities, if she found out where I was.

“That was what he was most afraid of—that I’d be found and arrested for killing that girl. I played on those fears to persuade him to kill Mary. I told him I’d confided my story to her, and now she was going to blow the gab—reveal I was Caleb Fiske, and set the authorities on me for murder and rape. Day by day, I fed him lies, made him think I was in deadly danger, that I’d have to run away, give up my life in London, my business, and he’d never see me again. And if I were caught—the gallows. He believed me, as always. He wanted to protect me. He’s always moved heaven and earth to protect me from everything—except my mother! He was so bloody terrified of her, he’d stand by and let her do anything she liked to me—beat me, scald me, starve me—punish me for anything, or nothing! Driving the devil out of me, she called it. But all she accomplished was to make me dead set on inviting the devil in!”

Sally shook her head. “I ought to’ve knowed you was her son. You’re just like her—you’ve both got no heart in you, and you likes to grinds your heels in folks and watch ’em squirm.”

“
Her young ones also suck up blood: and where the slain are, there is she.
See how well I remember my Bible.” He scowled suddenly. “I’d rather have no heart than no backbone, like that lump of jelly who sired me! And he weeps because I say I despise him! What else could he expect?”

Sally glanced at Fiske. He still sat slumped on the floor, his face drawn and his eyes tightly shut. All his energies seemed trained on hearing his son out without running mad.

“At all events, he made a first-rate cat’s paw,” Rawdon resumed. “He agreed to do Mary’s business for her. I made the plan, and he was to carry it out. He had access to the refuge—I didn’t. And if he were caught, I could always disappear and leave him to twist for it.”

“Lucky for you Mary turned up at the refuge, where you and him could get your hands on her.”

“It wasn’t luck at all—it was a cursed piece of folly!” His tongue was loosened now with a vengeance, Sally realized. He passed so much of his life imprisoned in silence and deception. The chance to talk frankly, to boast of his triumphs and air his grievances, was more than he could resist. “Mary was caught in our net in the usual way. One of my employees happened on her at an inn outside London. The poor little thing hadn’t anywhere to go. They wouldn’t let her stay at the inn—she was travelling alone, without a companion or servant, and they smelled something rum and turned her away. She could have brought them to heel by telling them who she was, but she was running away from her family—eloping or some such foolery—and she wanted to keep it dark. This employee of mine—a kind, matronly sort of woman—invited her to pass the night at her house. It’s one of the houses we keep in London especially for new recruits.

“To make a long story short, the lamb was led to the slaughter—drugged and turned over to a client of ours who makes a hobby of cracking dainty little pitchers like her. The next day, while she was too sick to talk or put up a fight, she was sold to a mother abbess who keeps a house near Covent Garden. That was where the trouble started. She woke up in the company of the old bawd and started raving. When she let on who she really was, the stupid woman panicked. All she could think of was to get shut of the girl as soon as possible. So she dumped her at the refuge.” He added grimly, “She’d heard about the place from me, damn her! Pa had told me my mother was smitten with the canting clergyman who
ran it, and later I joked to the old bawd about there being a refuge for whores up near Russell Square. I said they ought to thank us for keeping them supplied with fodder for reformation.

“When I found out who Mary was and what had become of her, I wrote to my father at his shop and asked to meet him. I sounded him about Mary. He knew her. He’d been sent for to treat her at the refuge, and he’d prescribed a cordial for her. I could hardly believe my luck when I found out she hadn’t squeaked. But she’d talk eventually. She’d crawl back to her fine family, and then I’d be for it, along with my employees, my whole business. So I put my father up to stoppering her jaw forever.”

“That letter I pinched—how does that come into it?”

“Pa was supposed to have doctored the cordial on a Monday, so Mary’d be dosed with it that night. He made up a compound to do the job—a strong opiate, laced with hemlock. I’d arranged to meet with him that same evening in the Haymarket—a nice crowded place, full of drunkards and pleasure-seekers, where we’d never be noticed. I wanted to make sure he’d carried out the first step of the plan. I knew he couldn’t lie to me—I’d have seen through him. I always did. But as it turned out, that very afternoon the little slut had given him that damned letter to post. Told him he seemed like a kind man, he was the only one she could trust, and more of the same sickening pap.

“Of course his heart was touched. He pleaded for her. He said, let’s just destroy the letter. She’ll think her father chose to cast her off, and she’ll go away and not make any more trouble. She’d promised as much in the letter. But
I
knew better! She’d never give up till she wormed her way back into her father’s good graces. So I made him give me the letter, and I went to work on him all over again, with lies and encouragement and reminders of the danger I was in, till I’d steeled him to carry out the plan. In the end, he promised to doctor the cordial next day.

“I kept the letter—that was my one mistake. I shredded the paper it was wrapped in, that had her father’s name and direction on it, but I wanted to read the letter at my leisure—just for my private amusement. So I put it in my pocket for the time being.

“My father and I parted, but I didn’t like the look of him. I followed him for a bit, from a distance, and I saw you pick him up. Poor old sod, he probably hadn’t had a woman in the devil knows how long. I followed the two of you here. I was still worried. I had an idea he might get confiding in bed and start wagging his tongue. So after you brought him upstairs, I greased the landlord’s palm, and he turned a blind eye while I went up and had a look through the keyhole. He wasn’t much of a lapful for you, was he? —a lusty little piece like you!”

Words failed Sally. She spat at him.

“Spit and scratch all you want to! I like it, you know. But you’d remember that, wouldn’t you? I made up my mind to have you after my father. It was what you’d call piquant, don’t you think? I waited in the taproom for the two of you to come down and for Pa to troop off, but before I could get near you, you got into a hack with some man. I hung about the taproom, hoping you’d come back. You did.”

“And you still had the letter! So it was you I pinched it from!”

“It was a high price to pay, wasn’t it, for a rub-off with a whore? You were a good poke, but hardly worth the trouble you’ve caused.”

Megan suddenly twisted in his arms, trying to squirm out from under the knife. “Oh, no!” he snarled. He gripped her harder, prodding the point against her chin. She strained to hold her head back, her eyes starting from their sockets. “I see how you’ve been stringing me on!” he hissed at Sally. “I’ve said more than enough. Now I’m finished with you all, and be damned to you!”

He backed through the door, dragging Megan with him. Sally rushed out after them. At the top of the stairs, Rawdon skidded to a halt. There were footsteps beneath them—men racing up the stairs.

Rawdon cursed, caught between the men speeding toward him from below and Sally coming at him with the pistol. He looked frantically one way and then the other. At last, with a howl of rage, he shoved Megan from him and plunged down
stairs, his knife upraised. Megan crashed into the stair-rail, and the rotten wood gave way. In a burst of flying splinters, she pitched over the side of the stairs.

Sally ran forward and looked over what was left of the banisters. Rawdon stood frozen on the stairs, facing Julian Kestrel, who was pointing a slim, sleek duelling pistol at his chest. Dipper hovered just behind him. Toby stared up at them from the flight below. At the bottom of the stair-well, two stories down, Megan lay broken and still.

CHAPTER
27

T
he tableau broke apart. Sally ran downstairs to see if anything could be done for Megan. Julian took the knife from Rawdon and drove him, spitting curses all the way, back up the stairs. Toby locked him in the front room on the second floor, Julian first checking to make sure he could not get out by the window. Dipper discovered Fiske in the back room across the hall, and Toby locked him in as well. It seemed best to confine them separately; Rawdon was in such a savage temper, there was no telling what he might do.

Meanwhile, Sally dropped down beside Megan. “Fetch some blankets,” she told the pot-boy, who stood by gawking. “And some brandy, the strongest you’ve got. And send for a surgeon. Go on! What you hanging an arse for?” The boy ran off.

Megan was alive, but only just. She was white, and barely breathing, and her eyes were misted over. When Sally took her hand, she did not seem to feel it, and she could not swallow any of the brandy when it came. Sally could only cover her with the blankets, and wait.

Julian, Dipper, and Toby came downstairs. Toby looked Megan over. After ten years as a boxer, there was not much he did not know about bodily injuries.

“She don’t seem to feel nothing,” said Sally, under her breath.

“Her back’s broke,” Toby muttered, shaking his head. “She’ll die in a minute or two.”

Megan’s dull eyes moved from them to Julian, who was kneeling on her other side. “Charles’s friend,” she whispered.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked.

“Tell Charles—” Her voice died away. When she spoke again, Julian had to bend close to hear her. “Tell him he’s won. There’s a letter—in the pocket of my cloak. Give it to him. I was bringing it to give to him tonight, but when I saw him gang awa’ from his house all alone, as if in secret—I couldna resist following after him. I thought—he might be ganging—to see Rosemary. Tell him—”

Her voice caught. Her face jerked and quivered with the effort to force her lips to move again. “Tell him to have mercy on her. What I did is none of her fault. Tell him to pity her, if he canna love her. Tell him—”

A spasm convulsed her face. Then the tension drained away, leaving it white and remote, as a statue’s. She would not need the surgeon now.

Julian and Toby carried her body into the small, soot-stained parlour behind the taproom, Sally going first to clear out the few customers who were there. They laid Megan on a long deal table, a candle burning by her head. Julian turned to Dipper. “Go to the Magistrate’s Court at Bow Street. Tell them to send an officer, and as many men as they think fit, to deal with Rawdon and Fiske. Don’t attempt to explain everything that’s happened— just tell them it’s a matter of murder, and there are people of rank and wealth involved. That should speed them along.”

Dipper obeyed. Toby looked very grim at the prospect of Bow Street Runners invading the Cockerel. He went off to assure his patrons that Bow Street’s business was not with any of them.

“Let’s see what this letter’s all about,” said Sally, feeling through Megan’s cloak. In one pocket, she found a few coins and a grubby latchkey; the other pocket was sewn shut. She broke the stitches and drew out an old, yellowed paper with a broken seal.

She unfolded it. It was grimy from handling, and the ink was faded, but the writing was still legible. She held it out to Julian eagerly. “What’s it say?”

“She asked us to give this to Avondale,” he pointed out, “not to read it ourselves.”

“I almost had daylight let into me on account of this here letter, and I’m blowed if I’ll hand it over without finding out what it says!” She explained quickly how Avondale had come to the Cockerel and threatened her with a gun, only to find that the letter he was seeking was not the one she had.

Julian agreed she had earned the right to know what was in the letter. Holding it close to the candle, he read aloud:

November 1821
Saturday

My dearest Megan,

For God’s sake, be sensible and don’t come here tonight. The Lauders are having a dinner party for a lot of great guns, and there’ll be the deuce to pay if you make a row. You know I love you, and yes, I promise to marry you, anything you like, only please don’t come here and kick up a dust in front of my friends. I’ll meet you tomorrow in the usual place. Don’t worry anymore. Believe me ever your own

Charles

“Well, I’ll be blowed!” exclaimed Sally. “What’s it mean? Was Megan his fancy woman? And did he get shut of her so he could take up with Rosemary? Then what did Megan want to find Rosemary so badly for? You’d think she would’ve have hated her like poison.”

Julian was only half attending. “What a devil of a muddle I’ve made of all this!” he said softly. “I was so dead set on
connecting Avondale to Mary and the refuge, I looked at everything the wrong way around. No wonder he wanted this back so desperately—”