A Dangerous Madness (22 page)

They made their way into the building to Harmer’s offices, up stairs of dark, lemon-scented wood.

Harmer himself was in the small reception room, giving instructions to his clerk, and Phoebe liked him immediately. He was round and big, but in a way that spoke of a generous country squire rather than a man prone to greed and voracious appetites. His eyes were sharp, too, and intelligent.

“Your Grace.” He looked Wittaker over with surprise, and Phoebe realized he must be puzzled at the duke’s understated mode of dress. And his reason for being there at all.

Wittaker flicked a look at the clerk. “Can we speak to you in private?”

Harmer nodded, and led the way into a large office off the reception room. It looked out over the street, with four long, thin windows that let in the light and sound of the city below.

“I must admit, I didn’t realize you knew me,” Wittaker told him as soon as the door was closed.

“You were going to present yourself under a different identity?” Harmer paused with his hand still on the door knob, and stared at them.

Wittaker shrugged. “I wasn’t sure. But it doesn’t matter. You do know me.” He glanced at Phoebe and then back to Harmer. “This is Miss Hillier.”

Phoebe exchanged greetings with Harmer and they eventually sat around his desk.

“I don’t really know how to proceed, in the circumstances.” Harmer looked between them. “Do you have need of my services for something…delicate?”

Phoebe looked at him blankly, wondering what on earth he could mean, but Wittaker seemed to have no such confusion.

“Nothing like that. I’ve been charged with investigating the assassination of the prime minister for…someone in Whitehall. And I thought, as Bellingham’s defense, you could help me.”

Harmer’s jaw went slack. “This is about Bellingham?” He looked over at Phoebe, as if trying to fathom her presence.

“What have you found out about him?” Wittaker leant back in his chair, and Phoebe thought she was coming to know him well. He exuded calm and patience, but she knew he was tightly wound as a jack-in-the-box.

“What do you want to know?” The suspicion in Harmer’s voice was unmistakeable.

“Where was he getting his money from, for a start?” Wittaker let himself relax even more in his chair.

“I haven’t even got that far.” Harmer rubbed a plump hand through his sandy hair. “I’ve only just been appointed to the case, and I’m already hearing the trial is set for tomorrow. I honestly thought it was a joke, but my clerk just came back from Gibbs’s office and apparently, that is not so. I’ll be on my way over to speak to Gibbs myself. There is no way I can adequately prepare a defense in such a short time.”

“No.” Wittaker sat a little straighter. “Does anything that you have found point to Bellingham being part of a conspiracy?”

“That’s what this is about?” Harmer grimaced. “I can’t tell you. I’ve really only had less than two days to review what little facts I’ve been given. He claims not. But I don’t think he’s sane. That will certainly be my defense.”

“Have you come across anyone who could help us? Someone who knows him well?” Phoebe wondered what the people who knew him thought of what he’d done.

Harmer looked down at a pile of notes on his desk, and Phoebe had the sense he was delaying while he thought his response through. “Only the obvious, his landlady, Mrs. Robarts. I’ve sent off to people in Liverpool, but there is no way they will have received any letters from London before this evening, and none will have had time to make it down to London for the trial. Even if they did, I wouldn’t know whether they would speak for or against Bellingham by the time the trial begins.”

“Where can we find Mrs. Robarts?” Wittaker stood, and pulled back Phoebe’s chair for her.

Harmer stood himself, his movements quick and nervous. His gaze flickered between them as he gave them an address. “I’ll be honest, Your Grace, I hope this investigation of yours comes to nothing. I don’t need any more complications to this case.”

Wittaker was already leading them to the door, but he turned back to Harmer. “It’ll come to something. Whether it is something that can be brought up in the farce of a trial tomorrow is another matter entirely.”

Harmer gave a slow nod. “Whatever happens, the Attorney General is not doing right by the law, neither the letter of it, nor the spirit.” He gave Phoebe a polite bow. Wittaker had not explained her presence, and she could see Harmer was curious about her. She smiled and murmured her thanks, and they left him standing, looking thoughtfully after them.

When they came down the stairs, Phoebe saw Wittaker’s driver had managed to squeeze the carriage in to a small driveway just a short distance from Harmer’s offices. They climbed in, and Wittaker called up the address Harmer had given them.

He had been quiet after they’d visited the gunsmith, and now he was even quieter.

He looked lost in thought, cut off from her, and a wave of longing for a connection like they’d had earlier this morning rose up and broke over her. She leaned forward and brushed her fingers down the side of his cheek.

He grabbed her hand and raised startled eyes to hers. “What is it?”

Her own daring astounded her.

“I… You looked unhappy.” Embarrassed, she tried to pull her hand from his as she sat back against the uncomfortable seat of hard, cracked leather.

He wouldn’t let go.

Instead, he brought her fingers to his lips, and kissed the tips lightly. “It has been some time since anyone cared if I was happy.” Only then did he let her go.

There suddenly wasn’t enough air in her lungs, and she let the cry of a street seller outside the window distract her from the intensity of his gaze. When she looked back at him, he was watching her, arms across his chest.

“What has you so deep in thought?” Her voice sounded rusty, like a door long locked and only just opened.

“I have a feeling we are chasing our tails.”

She nodded. “And yet, what else can we do? We are following the best leads we have.”

“If there was something better we could be doing, we’d be doing it. But I don’t like feeling like a headless chicken, blundering about.”

“We’ve learned a few things already, and it’s only ten in the morning.” She wondered whether her aunt had realized she was out yet, or if she was still in bed, recovering from the shock of last night.

He shrugged. “I’ll admit the gun from last night is one more connection with Bellingham. But we already knew the people trying to kill you were behind Perceval’s assassination. Beckwith was reluctant to say who might have owned that gun, but it was more a guarding of his clients’ privacy than anything else, I think. And we knew more than Harmer did about Bellingham.”

“You think visiting Mrs. Robarts will be just as useless?”

“I don’t know.” He tapped his fist on his thigh, his shoulders rigid and stiff. “I suppose she may have known what business he was doing. Or if business associates met him at his lodgings. She would have had day to day contact with him.”

“You’re worried we don’t have enough time. That the trial will start tomorrow and we won’t have a chance to find out who was behind this.” She spoke quietly, and he met her gaze as he nodded.

“There are so many people who wished Perceval ill. And with Bellingham refusing to name anyone but himself, in the time we have, I have to face that we may not get to the bottom of this.”

She kept her gaze on him steady. “You’ll get to the bottom of it. Even if you aren’t in time to do it before the trial.” She had sensed that from him since the moment they met. He was relentless.

He made a face. “What good will that do?”

“Maybe none. But you will do it.”

He braced himself as their old carriage came to a rocking halt. “You’re right. It’s personal for me now, but even if it weren’t, I’d follow the trail until I find the culprit.”

She waited for him to get out and offer his hand to her before she spoke again. “What will you do with them, when you find them?”

He turned, with her hand still in his, to look at the small house wedged between two others in a pretty street. “I’ll turn over their names to the man who asked me to look into this in the first place.”

“Will he do anything about it?” She resisted being led forward, suddenly needing to know that this effort, this danger, would not be for nothing.

“As much as he can. I believe that.”

It would have to be enough.

A young maid answered the door when Wittaker knocked, and led them into a snug little parlour, where a pretty woman sat, knitting, with a young boy playing with tin soldiers beside her by the fire.

“Mrs. Robarts?” Wittaker bowed, and even though he was not dressed as usual, and might have been any well-to-do gentleman, Mrs. Robarts scrambled to her feet, and nudged her son to do the same.

“You with the newspapers?” She frowned at the thought, but her brow cleared as Wittaker shook his head.

“No. We’re not. I hope you take our word that we are inquiring into the matter concerning Mr. Bellingham for the Crown, and cannot reveal too much.”

Phoebe didn’t think Mrs. Robarts would accept an explanation like that, she certainly wouldn’t have, but the woman blushed, and nodded immediately. “Of course, of course.”

She invited them to sit, and when they were settled, Phoebe thought the tiny room looked even more cramped with Wittaker taking up so much space in it.

“Mrs. Robarts, I understand you are holding a promissory note for Mr. Bellingham for twenty pounds?” Wittaker shifted on the small armchair he’d chosen, and it gave an ominous creak.

“I already gave it to the Bow Street Runner. Mr. Vickery.”

Wittaker nodded. “I know. I just wondered if that was a common thing? For you to hold promissory notes for Bellingham.”

Mrs. Robarts nodded her head. “A few times.”

“And do you know how Mr. Bellingham earned his money while he was in London?”

Again, she shook her head. “He came to London at the end of December and paid his first week’s rent in advance. And I did hear him say he had a shipment of iron or something he brokered, but when that was done, he told me he was staying on, but the money dried up. He owed me almost two months’ rent by the end of February, and I was getting worried about it, thinking I would have to ask him to pay up or leave, and him being so polite and congenial, and all, I was loathe to do it. Then suddenly, in the first week of March, he came into some money. Paid me, and bought himself a nice new set of clothes from Mr. Taylor down the way, got those pamphlets of his printed. Started taking us out now and then, to museums and exhibitions.” She looked down at her son, who had abandoned his tin soldiers to stare at Wittaker and her with open interest.

“How much was that, in all? Can you guess?” Wittaker tried to put the vulgar talk of actual sums delicately.

Even so, Mrs. Robarts looked uncomfortable. “I think around twenty pounds. Perhaps more.”

“You don’t know what the money was for?” Wittaker winked at the boy, breaking the tension in the room, and looked back up Mrs. Robarts.

She shook her head. “Mr. Wilson didn’t say, and nor did Mr. Bellingham. But the first time Mr. Wilson sent round a memorandum, I asked for an address, in case Mr. Bellingham wanted to contact him. He told me he did business out of the Virgina and Baltick Coffee House, over on Threadneedle Street.”

“So it could have been from legitimate business?”

She nodded her head, and then, as suddenly as if a lever had been pulled, she threw herself back in her chair and raised a hand to her forehead as if she had a fever. Phoebe wondered if perhaps she was hoping one would appear, so she could crawl into bed until the whole mess went away. “I never thought. Never, for a single minute, that he had murder on his mind. I would never have let Johnny within a mile of him. And he were polite! A real gent, he was. Why, he took Johnny and myself for an outing on Monday, and then when we were walking back, he excused himself from walking us home, said he had some business to take care of, and what did he do? Went off and shot the prime minister. That was his business. Calm as you please, he said it. Calm as you please! One minute looking at an exhibit, the next, killing a man.”

Wittaker looked across at her, and Phoebe gave a tiny nod of her head. They stood as one.

“We are sorry to have overset you, Mrs. Robarts. This must have been a shock to a refined woman like yourself.” Phoebe kept her voice low and steady, and Mrs. Robarts took a deep, shuddering breath.

“Thank you.” She made the attempt to struggle to her feet.

“Please don’t get up, we can see how terrible this must be for you. We’ll see ourselves out.” Wittaker bowed, an almost impossible feat in the tiny space, and then he took Phoebe’s arm and led her from the room.

As the maid closed the door behind them, Phoebe heard Mrs. Robarts start to sob, and winced. She didn’t think Bellingham’s landlady would be capable of being called as a witness either for or against him at the trial.

“So Bellingham received a sudden injection of funds around the end of February, or the beginning of March.” Wittaker held out his arm.

“Without, seemingly, doing any work for it.” Phoebe took it, let him lead her to the carriage, and then enjoyed the feel of him behind her, the light touches, as he helped her inside.