Die I Will Not (8 page)

To test his theory, he led Penelope out of the stream of pedestrians over to the window of a pastry cook. When she opened her mouth to question him, he gripped her arm in warning, feeling her give a little start of surprise, but she followed him obediently enough, even showing the good sense not to glance over her shoulder. Behind them, the man in the brown felt paused to examine another shop window.

While Chase pretended to ogle the tarts, pies, and jellies on the other side of the glass, he fumbled at his purse to make sure he had his money ready. “There's a man following us. We'll move again in a moment and nip round the corner to the stand.”

Her nod was a barely perceptible inclination of her head, the stiffness in her posture betraying apprehension. Giving her arm a reassuring squeeze, he guided her back into the line of pedestrians, and they set a rapid pace, weaving in and out of the passersby, several of whom erupted in protests at their rudeness. As Chase and Penelope made an abrupt right turn, the coach-stand came into view. Three hackney coaches were drawn up awaiting custom, and the waterman sat on a barrel at the curbstone next to the pump used to supply the horses. Confound it, thought Chase, there would have to be more than one coach available.

The waterman leaped to his feet. “Where to, sir?” He motioned to the conveyance at the head of the line. The box was empty, the jarvey having gone inside the pub to grab a pint while he waited. The driver of the second coach in line looked up indifferently and went on polishing a panel of his vehicle with a filthy cloth.

“Greek Street.” Chase slipped a large tip in the waterman's hand and leaned closer to whisper in his ear, simultaneously showing his Bow Street baton. The waterman brightened. “Yes, sir! Never fear. I'll attend to it.” Turning his head, he bellowed for the driver of the first coach, who stepped out of the taproom and mounted the box. The waterman opened the door of the coach and touched his hat politely to Penelope; the driver set his horses in motion, and they rattled off.

When they had gone a short distance, Penelope said, “What did you tell him?”

The side-glass was too small for Chase to get his entire head out, but he caught a glimpse of the man in the brown felt hat jumping into the second coach. The driver seemed to be finding it difficult to get his restive horses under control. As loud execrations followed them down the street, audible even over the cacophony of carriage wheels and voices, he leaned back, satisfied. “The jarvey will take our friend on a pleasant detour.”

Penelope's eyes gleamed with admiration. “An immensely clever trick, Mr. Chase. But who on earth was the man, and why should he follow us?”

He waved away her praise, absorbed in an attempt to assemble the facts as he knew them. They were meager at best: letters with cryptic references to some nameless woman dead nearly twenty years; attempted murder that had been concealed; and pursuers following either him, Penelope, or the both of them. Perhaps his attendance at Rex's rout-party had sparked the interest of these pursuers, or the interest stemmed from her relationship to Eustace Sandford, the former Collatinus. His worry increased. “This business has a nasty smell, Mrs. Wolfe. Until we get to the bottom of it, you must watch yourself.”

“I don't understand. Are we being shadowed because of the Collatinus letters?”

“I had entertained the possibility.”

“There was something in the way Mr. Rex spoke to me last night,” she said unhappily. “It occurred to me that he might believe me capable of writing these letters.”

“The idea may have occurred to any number of people, assuming they know who your father is.”

A new, even more disturbing thought seemed to present itself, for she went pale, twisting her hands in her lap. “Could it be—”

Chase found he very much disliked that particular expression on Penelope Wolfe's face. “What is it?”

“Last night I saw a man. Sarah had run outside. I found her there when I arrived home. This man was standing over her, as if he happened to be passing by and chanced upon her. The whole thing seemed strange somehow.”

“Why didn't you tell me this before? Did he frighten or hurt her?”

“No, she was perfectly fine. I picked her up and brought her inside. I thought little of it. I suppose I had other things to think about last night. But now—”

He listened while she stumbled through a description of the incident. When she had finished, he said, aware of sounding terse and unfeeling, “Keep the child close. Warn your servants to be on guard for anything out of the common, and tell your husband about the lurkers and your connection to the Collatinus matter. He will take steps to ensure your safety.”

She looked stricken. “Yes, I should have told him before. And you, Mr. Chase? How do you intend to get more information about Dryden Leach? His assailant may be Collatinus or lead us to him.”

“I've sent a message to Noah Packet.”

“You mean the little man you introduced me to in the street when I attended the St. Catherine procession. The thief?”

“Aye, but a useful one.” He smiled at her disapproval.

“What will you do?”

The answer seemed obvious: he would trace a few lines and hope to reveal the design. “I shall find the masked man.”

“I own I find it all rather perplexing. The blood on the carpet suggests Mr. Leach was attacked, and Mr. Rex admitted as much to me. He claimed there were reasons why the attack must remain a secret for the present. That would explain Leach's supposed illness and the two conflicting versions of events. But the whole thing seems unlikely, almost a Gothic tale. Why are there no witnesses? Why did no one report the crime to the authorities?”

“Unlikely, I agree. You are certain the source of the story was Mrs. Leach herself?”

“Mr. Rex received a note from the surgeon called to the wounded man, but surely it must have been Mrs. Leach who summoned this surgeon? Her husband would have told her about the masked man.”

“Don't worry. I'll ask her.” Anticipating the next words out of her mouth, Chase added, “That is, after I've escorted you safely home.”

Chapter VII

Not far from the office of the
London
Daily Intelligencer
sprawled the Adelphi, a stately terrace that seemed one vast structure with its uniform brickwork and pilasters decorated in ancient motifs. At the Leach residence in the center of the terrace, the knocker was muffled, and when Chase knocked, a footman in livery answered, informing him the mistress was not at home to visitors. The footman appeared to feel that a plainly dressed, middle-aged man of uncertain origin ought to have gone to the servants' entrance, and he made to close the door in Chase's face. To stop him, Chase gave his name quickly. “If your mistress is not available, be so good as to fetch her maid to me. My business cannot wait.”

A shade of uncertainty crossed the young man's face. He took a step back, allowing the door to crack wider. Chase did not hesitate but pushed past him to find himself in a groin-vaulted entrance passage dominated by a staircase of stone and iron. The first thing that struck him was the deathly quiet in the house, as if life itself scarcely thrived here. The hall, hung with ugly portraits and perfectly spaced gilt-framed mirrors, was clean and cold, offering no hint of the owner's personality. Somewhere above, Dryden Leach would be breathing his last, though a pall of mourning had already descended. Through an open door leading off the entry, Chase glimpsed a spacious, richly appointed library with large windows and decorative columns.

The footman left him standing there, and some minutes passed before a woman came down the stairs and moved toward him, her feet making no sound on the marble floor. She was a thin, drab, bespectacled person, sporting the single adornment of a shiny silver crucifix around her neck. She had brown hair confined in a tight bun and prim, colorless lips that did not smile.

“Good day. I am the children's governess, Miss Elliot. Albert said you have an important message for the family, Mr. Chase, and I thought someone should come down to receive it. Would you wish to write a note?”

“I much prefer to talk to you.” When she glanced around in dismay, as if wondering where to conduct this unauthorized conversation, Chase added, “Do not trouble yourself. We can speak here, Miss Elliot. I will take but a few minutes of your time.”

“I'm not sure how I can be helpful. Are you a friend of the family, sir?”

“In a manner of speaking.” He was not surprised by her puzzlement as he hadn't told the footman he was a Bow Street officer. He went on quickly before she could ask him to explain his presence. “I understand your employer is gravely ill. How is he today?”

“I wouldn't know. I have been with the children all day.”

“Has the doctor seen him?”

“I believe he came this morning, but we have not been told—”

“Can you tell me the surgeon's name, Miss Elliot? I might have a word with him to see whether anything further can be done for his patient.”

She hesitated, then said, “A Mr. Thomas Fladgate.”

“What of your mistress? She must have assistance in the sickroom, surely? A nurse?”

Miss Elliot's voice rose in distress. “She allows no one to share the burden with her. I've scarcely seen her since Mr. Leach was brought home in the hackney.”

“It seems a great a responsibility. I suppose the footmen carried your master upstairs?”

“Yes, sir, he was in a dead faint.”

“Who paid the driver?”

“The butler, Mr. Isherwood.”

“Has anyone spoken to Mr. Leach?”

“Just the surgeon and Mrs. Leach. I understand the patient has been prescribed laudanum to ensure his rest. I…I didn't know what to say to the children—” She looked at him with huge eyes framed by tiny, gold-rimmed spectacles. “I must return to my duties, Mr. Chase. Is there a message?”

A new voice spoke. “That will not be necessary.”

Startled, Chase looked up to see a tall, black-draped woman standing at the bottom of the staircase. She had descended so quietly that neither he nor the governess had caught her approach. One hand resting on the banister, she stood for a moment watching them before she glided forward. “Thank you for your assistance, Miss Elliot, but I will attend to our visitor.”

The governess bid Chase a hasty good-bye and scurried up the stairs, but his attention was focused on the woman who now confronted him—Mary Rex Leach. Under her cap, her face was composed, though lines of immense fatigue were evident, and her skin seemed too tightly drawn over her cheekbones. Blue eyes, sunken in their sockets, assessed him without ostensible interest. As Chase took in all her unrelieved, lusterless black, he remembered what Penelope had told him about Mrs. Leach having lost a child before this imminent bereavement.

“I am Mary Leach. You wished to speak to me? Let us step into the library, sir.”

He bowed and held the door for her to enter the room. Once inside, she gestured toward a chair and perched, her back straight, on a small sofa. Then she turned her eyes on him, clearly implying he must account for his presence—or get out.

“I beg your pardon for calling at such a time, ma'am.”

“You have a message for my husband?”

“For you, in fact. My friend Mrs. Wolfe is anxious to be of service to you. She has heard from Mr. Horatio Rex about the assault on your husband.”

“You know Mrs. Wolfe? My father has told me of his acquaintance with her husband, but I've not seen Penelope since she was a child of five years old. Yes, I must speak to her one day soon about a personal matter relating to her family.” As she uttered this statement, she punctuated it by clasping and unclasping her hands so that the skin at her knuckles whitened. After a moment, as if becoming aware of this convulsive motion, she laid them flat on her lap and sat up straighter.

“Your husband, ma'am?” Would you describe what happened to him and his current state of health?”

“He is very weak. I'm afraid I cannot tell you much more at present. I must return to the sickroom.” She rose to her feet, and he was forced to do likewise.

“Has Mr. Leach identified the masked assailant? You must be eager to see him apprehended and strung up as he deserves.”

“Oh, do not fear, sir. He will get what he deserves.”

Chase stared at her, nonplussed. In the twist of her lips and the flash of her eyes, he had glimpsed a marked resemblance to her father, a bitter humor that was more despair than anything else. “Your husband had been waging a public battle with a Jacobin called Collatinus. Was Collatinus the masked man, Mrs. Leach?”

“The masked man? You've got it wrong. You really must excuse me, Mr. Chase.” Mary Leach was already starting to turn away.

“Tell me how I am wrong, ma'am.”

“Dryden Leach had an enemy.” She shook her head helplessly. “I can say nothing more.”

This was surely an odd way to refer to one's husband lying at death's door; there was no emotion in the soft, precise voice, as if she gazed into a void only she saw and couldn't hope to describe. “Wait,” he said, his urgency growing. “May I carry a message to Mrs. Wolfe for you?”

Mary Leach was at the door, but at this she turned back to address him once more. “Tell her to be careful.”

In later years, Chase would recall her face as she spoke these words, and he would wish he had induced her to trust him.

***

He strolled toward Feathers Court at the southern end of Drury Lane. While he waited for Peter Malone, he intended to confer with Packet to see if the thief had turned up any information about Dryden Leach. But this was hardly a salubrious district to conduct one's business, and Chase kept a firm grip on his purse and watch, as he picked his way through a crowd of ragged men, women, and children. They were tenants of the foul courts opening from Drury Lane, many of them drunk, ill with consumption, or hungry—all of them cursed with poverty. Straight ahead, the spire of St. Mary le Strand, where most of them had probably been baptized, poked a finger into the darkening sky. And when they died, their bodies would mingle with a crowd of another sort in the tiny, overburdened burial ground nearby.

As Chase approached the archway that led to the court, his eyes fell on a woman lingering at the entrance: a plump whore in a low-cut gown and a frayed shawl fastened at her breast by an ornamental pin in the shape of a rose. At her feet sat a straw basket in which lay an infant who seemed to be asleep. As Chase watched, the woman extended one foot, clad in a torn and dirty slipper, and nudged the basket gently, her expression softening. But once she noticed his scrutiny, a hard mask descended. She lowered the glass of gin in her hand to leer at him. “Want company?”

“Not at present.”

“Later?”

“You know a man called Peter Malone? Likes to come here of an evening, lives hereabouts?”

She thought a moment, then jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Not to speak to. Lives in that court there with his wife and kiddies. He ain't been around yet if he's the one you want.”

Chase extracted a coin from his purse. “Here's a sixpence for you with a chance for another later. You keep your eyes open, eh? You see anyone following Malone, anything looks different, you come tell me in the Blue Anchor.”

She stooped to slip the coin under the baby's blanket, carefully balancing her glass so that its contents wouldn't spill. Roused from its slumber, the baby gave a whimper, too faint to be called a cry. When the money was safely stowed, the woman said wearily, “Not much happens here unless you want I should tell you when some poor sot starts banging on his wife and she sets up a screech.”

“Strangers, anyone showing unusual interest, anything that seems amiss. Can you do it?”

At her nod, Chase was about to walk away, but he paused. “This your usual patch, miss, or maybe you walk the Strand of a night? A man was attacked at the newspaper office round the corner. You hear anything about him?”

“Can't say I did.”

“Two nights ago. Nothing out of the common?”

“It was a slow night. Took myself off to bed early.”

“Listen, if you hear anything, will you bring word to John Chase at Bow Street? I'll pay for the information.”

She nodded again, and he went under the arch and into the court. It was a confined space hemmed in by high buildings where families inhabited one room each. The hideous odor of the cesspool assailed his nostrils, and he had to dodge some low-hanging laundry strung across the yard. Chase had seen many courts like this, and they were always the same: stench, squalor, criminality, despair. And yet there was always the local public house. Ignoring the tenants peeking furtively from their open doors, Chase entered the taproom of the pub. Redolent with ale, sweat, and smoke, the large room offered a cheerful contrast to the fetid court outside. A fire blazed in the hearth, and barmaids circulated, hoisting heavy trays in muscular arms. Other smells of uncertain origin greeted Chase, but, on the whole, the place was reasonably clean and inviting, its tables filled, its patrons eager to lay aside their worries for a short while and, at this early hour, not yet drunk into insensibility. An arm waved at Chase from a table against the wall near the bar, a position, he was not surprised to see, commanding a view of the entire room. The arm was attached to the diminutive form of Noah Packet.

Pulling out a chair, Chase joined him. It took him an instant to determine why the thief looked so unfamiliar; then he said, “New coat, Packet?”

Packet preened—there was no other word for it. “Like it?”

Chase did a thorough examination. Too large for Packet's slight shoulders, the coat was a handsome specimen nonetheless. Bright blue, double-breasted with large shiny buttons, it was made of quality warm, thick wool. This was certainly a change from the old black suit he had worn for years, but Chase told him he thought it a little conspicuous for one in Packet's profession.

“You may be right. Guess I couldn't resist.”

“How'd you manage to lift something like that?”

“Naw, I bought it. Came into some blunt unexpectedly.” His eyes skittered away.

Chase sighed. “Now what? You meant to play least in sight for the foreseeable future after the trouble you had last year.” When Packet had accidentally chosen an underworld crime king as a mark, he'd been forced to participate in a burglary, an offense more serious than his usual petty thievery. Catching him with the gains, Chase had been given an opportunity to peach and collect the reward, but he had not taken this opportunity. For one thing, the thief had repeatedly proved his worth in ferreting out bits of gossip from servants and tavern wenches. For another thing, Chase liked him too much to see him rot in prison.

Packet's eyes returned to rest briefly on him. “Ain't like that. I did a turn for a gentry-cove in the shipping line. Legitimate like. Never thought I'd go on the square, did ye?”

“Maybe we should pin a medal on you.”

Packet burst out with the hoarse sound that served as his chuckle. “Stubble it, Chase. You think I might have something for
you
, too?”

“I was hoping so. Cut line before the porter fellow arrives. Maybe you can watch him while I'm talking to him, see if you think he tells me true.”

“To be sure,” he said modestly. While Chase was pretty good at observing people, the thief was even better. Packet took out a pocket-handkerchief and began to polish one of his shiny brass buttons that had been spattered with a drop of porter. It was his peculiarity that he never looked a man directly in the face when about to divulge information. “Seems Malone may have come into a bit too,” he said, inspecting his cuffs. “He was here last night and heard to say he'd be taking his wife and childer to new lodgings.”

“A secret to sell? I thought as much.”

Packet shrugged. “I'll tell you something.” His muddy brown eyes traveled past a plaque announcing the age of the pub to drift indifferently over a buxom tavern maid, who had bent to serve a customer at the next table.