Let's Talk of Murder (13 page)

She slid her arm through his. “I don’t want to jig it with any other gentlemen than you, milord. Let us go to Lady Mandel’s concert. She’s hired that new Italian soprano everyone is talking about.”

“You don’t like Italian singers. The last concert we attended, you complained of the earache for a week.”

“That was a violinist. And he wasn’t Italian.”

He knew Corinne loved to dance nearly as much as she disliked classical music, and was touched that she chose an entertainment that allowed them to be together. They were not the type to fawn over each other in public but he sensed, as they sat together holding hands beneath her feathered fan and half listening to the Italian soprano, that a new closeness was growing between them, and was more contented than he had been in years. Perhaps ever.

* * * *

Coffen, looking through the carriage windows as he was bounced mercilessly over the cobblestones, saw ahead a stream of carriages, spotted the imposing complex of marble and porphyry that was the newly rebuilt Drury Lane Theater, and realized they were heading in the wrong direction. Fitz was lost, again. He gave the drawstring a tug and Fitz drew the team to a halt. When Fitz’s scowling face appeared at the window, Coffen said, “Demme, what ails you, Fitz? You ought to have taken a right turn at Haymarket. Down Whitehall and across Westminster Bridge to Lambeth. You’d get lost going ‘round the block.”

“It’s the team, Mr. Pattle. They’ve been to the theater that often they go on by themselves. I’ll have a word with them and see if they’ll turn about.”

It was some time before the horses agreed to turn around and go to the Morgate Home. Coffen was afraid Fanny would have given up on him and gone to bed. The explicitness of her instructions left no doubt that she had done this sort of thing before. He was to leave the carriage at the corner and proceed on foot to the Morgate Home, go down the walk to the garden shed, get the ladder and put it against the third window from the right on the second row of windows in the annex.

After a dozen perusals, he had the instructions by heart, but they proved difficult to execute. The first problem was the ragamuffin lad who appeared from nowhere when he reached the Morgate Home and dogged his every step, taunting him. “Know where you’re going, mister. You’re going to pick up one o’ them girls from the house, ain’t you?” He swiped a ragged sleeve across his nose and grinned.

“Run along, lad.”

“I know your sort. Dandies, preying on them pore, fallen wimmen.”

Coffen handed him a coin. The fellow bit it to test its authenticity before sliding it into his pocket. “Thanks, mister,” he said, but he didn’t leave. In fact, he seemed to think the coin had hired his services. “This way,” he said, leading Coffen unerringly to the garden shed and the ladder.

The ladder was long and exceedingly heavy. Coffen wished he had brought Fitz with him. The urchin watched and kept up a constant stream of chatter but when invited to “Take hold of t’other end,” he danced away. Dragging it across the flagged walk made a deal of noise. And to add to the fear of getting caught, it was cold and dark and scary. Swaying branches caused an eerie sensation of someone moving in the darkness, ready to leap out at him. It lacked only the haunting hoot of an owl to complete the gothic effect. As to his jacket and gloves, Coffen feared they were beyond repair, and certainly beyond appearing at any polite spot.

He had hoped to sneak Fanny into his box at Covent Garden for a treat. No fear of Luten or the others seeing him. They were all accounted for. If they heard he had been at the theater with a lady, he would say his cousin Susan was in town visiting Aunt Mabel, whom he must remember to let on was cured of her various illnesses. What was that expression Prance often used — “Oh what a tangled warp we woof, when first we practise to– no, that didn’t rhyme, but it was something to do with weaving anyhow.

When he felt the perspiration dripping into his eyes, he raised one hand to wipe it away. The ladder was too heavy for one hand. It fell with a clatter. Not two seconds later, a back door opened and a woman wearing a mob cap peeked her head out.

“Here, what’s going on?” she called in a harsh voice. Coffen froze. She looked all around but failed to spot his dark jacket in the shadows. “Is that you, Willie?”

The urchin strolled forward. “It’s only me, Meggie. Any leftovers from dinner?”

“I’ll take ‘em to your ma on my way home. Now be off with you.” Muttering, she went back inside and closed the door.

Between fatigue, soiled jacket, frustration and the conviction that he was too late, Coffen was ready to give up. If Fanny’s head had not appeared through an upper story window at that moment, he would have left.

She peered out and called enticingly. “Is that you, Mr. Pattle?”

He went forward. “It’s me, Fanny,” he called back in a whisper. “I’m having a bit of trouble with the ladder.”

“Give the gentleman a hand, Willie. What ails you?”

Willie, who had refused repeated urgings from Prance, immediately took up one end of the ladder. With his help, Coffen got it propped against the wall below Fanny’s window and she struggled out, feet first, followed by an interesting display of legs and petticoats. Willie watched with a lecherous grin on his dirty face.

Once on the ground, Fanny made a great commotion of straightening her skirts, rifling her reticule to extract a comb, tidying her hair, adjusting her shawl and generally getting herself into shape. This done, she said to Coffen, “Where’s your rig then? I hope you don’t expect me to go by shank’s mare.”

“My rig’s down the street, where you told me to leave it.”

She put her hand on his arm and said, “What are we waiting for? We’ll slip along the back, in case Bruton is looking.”

She led him to a path that ran between the back of the house and the stable. He noticed a dark carriage waiting in the shadows in front of the stable. “What’s that?” he asked.

“It’s nothing to worry about. Come along.”

They were eight or ten yards beyond the Home when he heard the noise of an opening door. Some scattered shrubbery made vision difficult, but he stopped to listen. It was voices, girls’ voices, laughing and chatting excitedly. They could only be coming from the Morgate Home.

“What’s going on? Where are they going?” he asked Fanny.

“To a retreat,” she said. “It’s a religious thing. They have prayers and fasting to purge their souls.”

He hunkered down and peeked through the bushes. The girls were certainly rigged out in high style for this religious retreat. In their low-cut gowns with their hair piled high on their heads they looked like a flock of ladybirds.

“Come on,” Fanny urged, tugging at his hand. “We don’t have all night. I’ve got to be back in my bed before daybreak.”

He allowed himself to be drawn away. Fitz stood at the carriage, chewing a cheroot. A cloud of ill-smelling smoke billowed around his head. He had the door open and the steps down, to atone for having got lost en route. Fanny stepped in with a bold smile to the coachman. Coffen was about to join her when he saw Willie, trailing after them.

“I should give the lad a few pennies,” he said to Fanny, and closed the coach door. He dropped a handful of coins into Willie’s outstretched palm. Willie’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when he espied the glint of silver.

“Follow that rig that’s leaving the Home,” Coffen said. “Take a hackney if you can get hold of one. If you can find out where that rig goes, there’s a golden boy in it for you. Here’s where I live.” He routed in his pocket and handed the boy one of his dogeared calling cards.

Willie stared, unable to believe his senses. “Yessir,” he gulped. “Yessir, I will. You can count on Willie Sykes. Yessir.”

Coffen joined Fanny and the carriage was off. “Anywhere in particular you’d like to go, Fanny?” he asked. “I thought you might like to see a play. Fear I’ve got a bit of mud on my clothes.”

“I could do with a spot of dinner. The slop they feed us at that place!” Coffen was never one to argue about eating. “There’s a cozy little inn out the Chelsea Road where they’re not too nosey. Know what I mean?” She gave him a nudge with her elbow and a bold wink.

Coffen had made the date with honorable intentions, but he saw now that he could relax and enjoy himself. It was just like being out with one of the actresses. Of course Fitz couldn’t find the inn Fanny wanted to visit, but after driving around in circles for three quarters of an hour he found one similar without ever crossing over the Thames.

The Beacon Arms was a half-timbered inn with a thatched roof, tucked into a nest of fir trees. Other than half a dozen men drinking in the public room, it was deserted. Coffen asked for a private parlor and was led to a room that did have a table, but whose most prominent feature was a chaise longue piled with cushions. When he helped Fanny remove her shawl, he saw she had squeezed most of her fulsome body into Corinne’s lutestring gown, which was a few sizes too small for her, and all the more attractive for it, to his undemanding eyes.

They enjoyed a meal of roast duck and shared two bottles of wine. Coffen tried his hand at getting information from Fanny, but she was not foolish or drunk enough to oblige him. Henry Fogg hadn’t known Lord Clare. It was Doctor Harper who had arranged for her remove to the Morgate Home. The girls who left the Home that evening were going to attend a religious retreat, and that was all she had to say.

“How come you weren’t going to the retreat?” he asked.

Anger betrayed her into her one unwise remark of the evening. “I’ve got you to thank for that, haven’t I? Lord Clare didn’t like me talking to you. He was punishing me. He was sore at me for taking Lady deCoventry’s gowns as well.”

“It looks dandy on you,” Coffen said. Her bosoms bulged over the top like melons trying to escape from an overly full basket. “Why didn’t he want you to talk to us?”

The look she gave him was half angry, half frightened, and wholly sly. “He didn’t say. Why are we wasting time talking about him when that nice bed is going to waste?” She tossed her head in the direction of the chaise longue, which was sufficient distraction that Coffen forgot about business for the next hour.

When he returned her to the Morgate Home, he hadn’t learned anything more. The ladder was still against the wall. She clambered up and into her room. Coffen blew her a kiss and managed to get the ladder away from the window, but left it at the side of the annex. He was too tired to drag it back to the garden shed.

He dallied about the carriage for half an hour, hoping that Willie would return, but at two o’clock he gave it up and began the long, circuitous drive home. He fell asleep in the carriage. As it was past three o’clock when they reached Berkeley Square, he assumed Fitz had got lost again. Tahrsome fellow. The square, including his own house, was in darkness. His butler never waited up for him. He let himself in and tiptoed up to bed, to avoid disturbing his servants.

Coffen knew he had to let his friends know about his evening with Fanny but hesitated to tell Luten or Prance. Luten would look at him with that frozen gray eye and make him feel like an errant schoolboy. Prance would poke fun at him, very likely with a bit of gratuitous Latin or French thrown in.

Thing to do, tell Corrie, and let her tell the others. She’d cut up a bit but he didn’t mind that. With this course of action in mind, he went to call on her at breakfast time. She sat with her companion, Mrs. Ballard, whose jaw was swollen but who still smiled vaguely at Pattle and said it was a lovely day, which told him she hadn’t been out, for while the sun was shining the wind was getting that nasty winter nip in it.

Deuced odd how everybody else could keep a warm house in such weather. Their houses smelled of nice toast and coffee at breakfast time, whereas his smelled like smoke and stale ale.

“Coffen, you were to take breakfast with Prance today,” Corinne reminded him. “Did you forget?”

“As a matter of fact, I did.” He slid on to a chair, flickered an impatient eye at Mrs. Ballard and said, “Actually, I wanted a word with you.”

Seeing that Mrs. Ballard was nearly finished her poached egg and toast, Corinne said, “Why don’t you have some toast and coffee? I’ll send the backhouse boy to tell Prance you’re eating here.” She knew Mrs. Ballard, that patterncard of discretion, would soon leave them alone.

“I’m finished. Let me tell him for you, milady,” Mrs. Ballard said, and was out of the room with her breakfast in her throat before Corinne could stop her.

“What is it?” Corinne asked him at once.

“I believe I’m on to something, Corrie. I went to call on Fanny last night.” He ignored her glare and relayed disjointedly what had happened. “I believe the girls in that annex are nothing else but a parcel of lightskirts. ‘Pon my word, that Fanny near jumped me, there at the inn.”

“Good gracious! We must let Lord Clare know what’s going on. I’m sure he has no idea.”

“I’m not sure he ain’t at the bottom of it. He wouldn’t let Fanny go with the others because of talking to us.”

“Greenhead! That’s her story. No doubt she would have been in the carriage with them if she hadn’t made that rendezvous with you. That was wretched of you, taking advantage of her.”

“Dash it, I had no intention of– She was the one–”

Sir Reginald wafted silently into the breakfast parlor, a vision in blue superfine, with a dotted Belcher kerchief at his throat in emulation of Lord Byron’s bohemian style. He had gone to bed with one lock of hair twisted into a rag to produce a curl, which dangled over his forehead. He was acutely aware of the stares this new style was causing, and wondered whether they were due to admiration or amusement.

“What a charming opening line, Pattle. Fraught with revealing obscurities. I congratulate you. What ‘she’  are we discussing, and what lack of intentions on your part? I trust Tante Mabel– or was it Mary, or Marion?– has not expired from that conglomeration of ailments she was suffering yesterday?”

Coffen scowled at him. “Eh? Didn’t you get my message?”

“To be sure, I did. That is precisely why I’m here. As my chef prepares a superior breakfast to Corinne’s– no offence, Corrie, but we all know my André is unequalled—as I was saying, I knew there must be an important reason for your deserting me. And after I asked André to make your favorite Irish potatoes too,” he added with an expression perilously close to a pout.