A Broken Vessel (4 page)

“I beg your pardon?”

“See this wipe? I lifted it off the cove I called Blue Eyes. He was a real gentry-cove, togged out to the nines, very swell in his speech. Now, if this gal was a lady, it’s him she would have wrote to, not one of them others.”

“What were they like, the other two men?”

“This here is Bristles.” She held up the russet calico handkerchief, as if introducing the man it came from. “He kept a shop, I could tell by his duds. He was very natty—wore a clean white crumpler, with his gills standing up all straight and neat.” She held up her forefingers, imitating the corners of a turned-up collar. “He had on a plain brown frock coat, and his waistcoat and trousers was buff. He must’ve been about fifty, dark hair going grey, brown eyes, and his chin was stubbly, like his beard growed faster than he had time to shave it.”

“You’re very observant.”

“You has to be, if you goes with a lot of coves like I does. You learns to drop down to ’em slap off, so you don’t pick up none of the wrong kind. ’Cept sometimes you guesses wrong.”

Her lips twisted. She took up the third handkerchief, a square of cheap, nondescript grey silk. “This is Blinkers. I called him that on account of he wears specs. He was young—younger than you, most like—and rigged out in rusty black, like a clerk. Which I expect he was—his forks was stained with ink. He was skinny, his hair was brown, and so was his eyes, but you couldn’t see into ’em very well, on account of his specs. I don’t think he wanted nobody to know what he was thinking: he was muffin-faced, never flashed his ivories, never showed no feelings at all—till we got upstairs, that is. Then he pitched into me. Some coves is like that—it brings ’em on, hurting a gal.”

“I’m sorry.”

He was looking at her with that concern in his eyes again. She could not bear it. She leaned toward him, smiling, letting her torn gown gape at the neck. His eyes dropped briefly—so he was human, after all—then returned to her face. “The third man was a gentleman, you say?”

“Well, he was the second, really. He come in between. He took me into a hack with him. He give me a ride, and I give
him
one, if you get me drift.”

“Quite.”

“He was a dimber cove, he was! Dark gold hair; blue eyes you could dive into and drown, and a figure as could warm up a dead gal. He was rigged out in a blue tailcoat, with white trousers and shiny black stampers, and miles of white frill on his shirt front. He flashed a gold ticker and a bunch of seals, and a ring that was an out-and-out slasher: gold, with a skull in the middle, and a sparkler in every corner.”

“Good God.” Mr. Kestrel caught up the white cambric handkerchief. “
CFA
. Sally, I know who that man was. He was the Honourable Charles Avondale, Lord Carbury’s younger son.”

“Cor! He really was a nob, then! And you knows him?”

“Not well, but we cross paths from time to time. The ring you described is a family heirloom—he wears it all the time. The initials fit, and so does your description. I’ll lay you any odds, Avondale is the man you call Blue Eyes.”

“And it’s him I pinched the letter from, don’cha think? He’s the only one as’d have a real lady in his family—one who’d write a letter like this.”

He shook his head. “If Blue Eyes is Avondale, it’s very unlikely the letter was written by a relative of his. His father is a peer, and the whole family is prominent in society. A lady couldn’t very well go missing in that family without attracting a good deal of attention. And as far as I know, all the Carbury ladies are accounted for.”

“All right, you’re such a downy one,
you
guess which of them three coves she wrote to.”

“Perhaps none of them. If you think about it, there are all kinds of other explanations. The man you stole the letter from may have been entrusted with it by a friend, or had it sent to him by mistake, or even found it in the street. Or else—”

“Or else what?”

“This woman says she’s being spied upon, and she’s afraid someone may take the letter from her before she can post it. That may be what happened: the man from whom you stole it may have stolen it from
her
.”

“My, ain’t you twistical, though!” she said admiringly. “S’pose you’re right, and somebody pinched her letter? That means whoever she wrote it to never got it, and don’t know where she is. And she’ll think he don’t want her and don’t forgive her, and maybe she’ll never get out of that place she’s shut up in.”

“Of course, it could all be some sort of joke. Or an exercise by some high-strung would-be novelist.”

“What if it ain’t? What if it’s on the square?”

He smiled quizzically. “Then we’ll have to do something about it, won’t we?”

There was a bustle in the hallway. Julian went out and found Dr. MacGregor and Dipper just arrived. It had begun raining, and MacGregor’s hair and beard stuck out in little wet points. “You look like Neptune on a fountain,” Julian greeted him.

MacGregor gave Dipper his hat, shook off his capacious old greatcoat, and rounded on Julian. “How you can live in this city, year in and year out, is beyond me! The streets are never quiet for a blessed instant! Even at this time of night, there are carriages rattling by as loud as cannons, people out shouting and singing and fighting, and I don’t like to think what else! We were almost run over by a coal-heaver’s wagon—Lord knows what it was doing out at this hour—and then a group of scurvy drunken louts stole my hat and carried it halfway down the street before Dipper got it back. Yes, all right, you can smile, but there was nothing funny about it! Where’s my patient?”

“She’s in the parlour. Thank you for coming out so late.”

“I’m used to it. If you want to get a good night’s sleep, don’t become a surgeon.”

“How is Dr. Greeley?”

Dr. Greeley was an elderly surgeon who had been MacGregor’s teacher many years before. MacGregor was in London to help look after his patients while he recovered from an illness. “He’s well enough. Trying to take back too much of the work before he’s ready. Truth is, he’s getting too old for it, but he’s too blessed stubborn to think about retiring.” He picked up his medical bag. “All right, let’s have a look at her.”

“I should warn you, she’s a bit nervous of doctors.”

“Quite right, too. Some of ’em don’t know a kidney stone from a peach-pit. I’ll manage her all right.”

He disappeared into the parlour, as calm and practical as he had been irascible a moment before. He might give the rough side of his tongue to everyone else, but Julian had never seen him show his temper to a patient.

“He’ll be wanting tea, I imagine,” he said to Dipper, for MacGregor rarely took spirits.

“Yes, sir. Sir?”

“Yes?”

“I want to thank you, sir, for having Sally here, and that.”

“I don’t know what there is to thank me for. Did you expect I should throw her into the street?”

“No, sir, I knew you’d treat her uncommon fine. That’s why I sneaked her in when I thought you was out—so as not to take advantage.”

“What rubbish. Hadn’t you better put the water on to boil? Dr. MacGregor should be finished examining her shortly. If she cooperates,” he added, with a wry smile.

“Yes, sir.” Dipper turned to go.

“Just a moment. Have you and Sally any family besides each other?”

“No, sir, not as I knows on.”

“I see. All right, you may go.”

Dipper left to get the tea ready. Julian went into his study, frowning. He was more than willing to take Sally in and see that she got any medical care she needed. The question was, what on earth were they to do with her afterward?

“Nothing wrong with her that a little rest and good nourishment won’t cure,” pronounced MacGregor, plumping down in a chair by the study fire.

“I’m glad to hear it, thank you, sir.” Dipper gave him a cup of tea.

“She’s badly bruised, mind you.” MacGregor’s face darkened. “That man’s a brute, whoever he was.”

“Yes, sir,” Dipper said quietly.

Julian could see that Blinkers would be in a very bad way if Dipper ever ran across him. “She’ll stay here for the present, of course. She can have your room, if she’s able to walk up to the attic, and you can sleep on the sofa in the parlour.”

“Thank you, sir.”

MacGregor’s thick, grizzled brows shot up, but he said nothing until Dipper had gone. “You think that’s wise? Keeping her here, I mean.”

“What else can we do? She can’t go out again at this time of night, injured as she is.”

“No, I suppose not. But I don’t like it above half.”

“My dear fellow, what is this all about?”

MacGregor set down his tea-cup with a clank and leaned forward, hands propped on his knees. “Do you know what she wanted to talk about the whole time I was in there?”

“I have no idea. Repeal of the Corn Laws?”

“No—you! How did I meet you, what did I know about you, what did I make of you—”

“You must have found the deuce and all to talk about,” said Julian, eyes dancing. “Just making a catalogue of my faults could have occupied you an hour or more.”

“She’ll make trouble for you, Kestrel, mark my words.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“What sort do you think?”

“Oh, really, my dear fellow!”

“You can laugh, but if you’re shut up long enough with her, it could lead to anything: She’s a taking little thing, and you’re a young man, with a young man’s weaknesses.”

“I think I can manage to spend a night or two under the same roof with her without my passions overcoming me. For God’s sake, she’s Dipper’s sister. I should as soon think of dangling after my venerable landlady.”

“Hmph! I still say there’s trouble in store for you, one way or another.”

“I shouldn’t mind a little trouble. I’m frightfully bored.”

“I can’t understand that,” MacGregor said tartly. “You change your clothes at least three times a day. That ought to be occupation enough for anybody.”

“I know you think my life is somewhat lacking in purpose.”

“I think you fritter away your time, if that’s what you mean.”

“I liked the way I put it better.”

“Yes, well, fine words butter no parsnips.” He added more quietly, “I’ve seen what you can do when you’re roused to a purpose. That’s something I’d like to see again.”

“But not another purpose like the last one, surely?”

“If you mean, would I like to see another murder—no, I could get on very well without that!”

Julian said nothing for a time. He had conflicting feelings about the Bellegarde murder. The hunt for the killer had been fascinating—hardly any experience he had ever known could match it. But his solution to the crime had caused so much grief that he had felt more guilt than triumph. At least it was over and done with, he had told himself when he returned to London. His unlikely career as a Bow Street Runner was closed.

It was not so simple—he understood that now, three or four months later. He glanced ruefully around his study. Well-thumbed editions of the Newgate Calendar, with its lives of famous criminals, mixed themselves in with the history and music books on his shelves. Today’s
Morning Chronicle
was tossed aside to make room for Bow Street’s police gazette, the
Hue and Cry
. Like it or not, he was developing a consuming interest in crime—its motives and methods, and the clues that brought them to light. Perhaps he had always been drawn in that direction; that might be one reason he had taken on a pickpocket as his servant. Then, too, the Bellegarde murder had made him vividly aware of the anomaly of a bustling, modern nation with almost no professional police. Of course, the English were jealous of their liberties, and convinced that a large, ubiquitous police force like France’s would undermine them. But to Julian, who had lived in France, it seemed that one of the foremost liberties any subject ought to enjoy was the freedom to walk in the streets without fearing for his pocketbook, or his life.

“I do have what you might call a purpose just now,” he said, “though it may not turn out to be any great matter. I should like to know who wrote this letter, and what it means.”

He took the letter from his pocket and gave it to MacGregor to read, first explaining how Sally had come by it. “It conjures up a vivid picture,” he finished. “A lady of good breeding and education, writing secretly at night, on cheap paper, without an India rubber or a penknife, squinting to see by the light of a farthing dip.”