The Mask of Night (30 page)

Roth gripped the strap against the swaying of the carriage. “Miss Dudley, we don’t know what we’re walking into. You aren’t—“

“I’m not Mélanie Fraser. But then few people can equal her in such situations, man or woman. You and Mr. Trenor may remain discreetly in the background and come to my rescue the moment it seems necessary.”

Roth found himself nodding, then wondered if the cool steadiness of her voice had lulled him into madness. Either that or Mélanie Fraser’s example had quite turned his judgment upside down. Not that that was necessarily a bad thing.

Three men in tattered breeches and muddy coats were asleep on the pavement in front of the Running Hare. They looked harmless enough, but Roth took a step closer to Miss Dudley under cover of opening the door for her.

The interior of the Running Hare was close and humid. Tallow candles set in a tarnished brass hanging lamp and wall sconces tilting on their brackets threw pungent fumes into the air and cast yellow light over the scene. A thin man who looked as if he might be a companion of the three on the pavement was slumped against a barrel. The crowd round the bar was six or seven deep. Roth spotted the silk top hats of young gentlemen probably finishing off an evening at the theatre; the plumed bonnets of birds of paradise; the frayed coats of laborers; and a variety of dress on a handful of persons he’d lay even money were thieves. A barefoot child clad in tattered breeches and a waistcoat that appeared to belong to his father was standing on his tiptoes at the bar, holding out a sauce boat to have it filled with gin.

A baby’s squall split the air. Roth turned his head in time to see a girl in a grimy white dress and scarlet cloak, with aged eyes set in a teenaged face, tip a flask down the throat of the infant in her arms.

He turned back to see that Miss Dudley had taken advantage of his distraction to slip up to the bar (somehow managing to negotiate her way through the crowd in half the time it would have taken him). He looked at Trenor, whose eye had fallen on a lady with pale ringlets peeking out from beneath a deep-brimmed bonnet trimmed with tattered purple flowers. He took a half step forward. Roth followed and collided with Trenor as the latter drew up short. Not Miss Simcox apparently.

“The back room.” Miss Dudley joined them, as quietly as she had left. “Through the curtains.”

A burly man in his shirtsleeves was guarding the doorway, but he let them pass at a look from the barkeep. Miss Dudley gave a serene smile. Roth wondered what the devil story she’d told.

The frayed calico curtains gave onto a room of about the same size and a similar complexion, though there was no bar, a few tables and chairs were scattered about, and more of the women had their bodices unlaced.

Trenor ran forward, elbowing and stumbling his way through the crowd. Roth and Miss Dudley followed to see him come to a stop by a table at which sat a blonde girl of about twenty and a man a year or so younger with curly dark hair. Their short noses, wide set blue eyes, and smattering of freckles made the relationship between them apparent.

The girl caught sight of Trenor as he came within two paces of the table. “Sandy. Damn and blast everything.”

“Bet.” Trenor touched her hair. “Why didn’t you trust me?”

“It’s not about trust. It’s— Who the blazes are they?”

Roth and Miss Dudley came a stop beside the table, blocking any attempt at flight. Trenor turned to them, face suffused with guilt. “They’re friends. Miss Dudley works for the Frasers, and Roth—“

“Roth.” The young man sprang to his feet. “I’ve heard your name. You’re a bloody Bow Street Runner.”

“Sit down, Simcox.” Roth pushed him back into his chair. “You’ll draw attention to yourself. You are Billy Simcox, aren’t you?”

“Why the hell should I tell you?”

“Because you’re in a world of trouble, as I’m sure your sister has explained, and I can help you.”

“Don’t need any help.”

“Oh, yes, you do, my friend. And I think you’re wise enough to know it, or you wouldn’t have sent for your sister. For what it’s worth, I don’t think at the start of this venture you had any notion of whom you’d gone to work for.”

“I’m not working for anyone.”

“No? Well, perhaps not at the moment, considering your employer met his death last night.”

“Says who?”

“Sam Lucan apparently.”

“Ha. You’re more fool than you look if you’ll take Sam’s word for anything.”

Roth leaned toward young Simcox and fixed him with the gaze he’d give one of his sons. “Don’t be stupid. Help us and not only will any charges against you be dropped, you’ll be handsomely compensated.”

Simcox’s gaze flickered over his face, swift as candlelight. “Why should I trust you?”

“Because mine’s the best offer you’re going to get tonight.”

Simcox flashed a look at his sister.

“Write it out,” Miss Simcox said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“What you just said. That you’ll let Billy go if he helps you. Write it out and sign it.”

“Betty—“ Trenor said.

“Stay out of this, Sandy. You’ve already done too much. And mind it really says what it’s supposed to, Mr. Roth. I can read.”

Roth took his notebook and pencil from the pocket of his greatcoat, pulled the tin candlestick closer, and began to write. He could feel both Simcoxes staring at him as he scribbled. He was just signing his name when he caught a stir of movement out of the corner of his eye. Not particularly fast but odd somehow. Different from the habitual bustle in the room.

“Get down!” He flung himself across the table and grabbed the Simcoxes as a bullet whistled across the room and buried itself in Billy Simcox’s head.

Mélanie stepped through the double doors of the library, which Charles was holding open, to find their four guests already assembled. The fire blazed with welcome warmth and Michael had had coffee sent in. Simon and Hapgood had removed their greatcoats and wore their own clothes, now very nearly dry. Raoul was also still in his own clothes, muddy and torn from the fight. Will was clad in a shirt and trousers of Charles’s, the shirt open at the neck, the trousers rolled up at the ankles.

If the four men had been talking in their hosts’ absence, they gave no sign of it. Simon was pouring out the coffee. Will was perched in one of the high-backed Queen Anne chairs cleaning his spectacles. Hapgood stood by a glass-fronted bookcase, a candle in his hand, examining the titles. Raoul was slumped on the sofa. His eyes appeared to have drifted closed.

Mélanie sat beside him and set her medical supply box down on the sofa table with a clatter. He jerked to attention. “I’m quite all right, as you can see, Mrs. Fraser. I daresay I’ll do very well until—“

“Do stop wasting time with prevarication, Mr. O’Roarke.”

Raoul grimaced—much as Charles’s would in the same circumstances. The bullet scrape on his shoulder really was little more than a scratch. The knife cut was more serious. Her makeshift bandage was soaked through with blood, but the wound appeared to have stopped bleeding. It was a long, jagged cut but it did not appear particularly deep. It would not require stitches. She doused a towel with vinegar.

She could feel Charles’s gaze upon her and Raoul for a moment. Then he turned to the others. “Right. We can talk while Mélanie works on O’Roarke. What were you doing in the park?”

Simon carried his coffee cup over to the drinks trolley and splashed brandy into it. “This is your scene, Charles. You’re always explaining how the criminals orchestrated the crime. Surely we deserve as much.”

“All right,” Charles said. “But it’s largely supposition.”

“Isn’t it always?”

Charles drew a breath, sharp enough that Mélanie looked up from snipping off a length of lint. His damp hair fell over his forehead in the way that always made him look like a schoolboy, but his face was uncharacteristically hard. “You and Gordon and Hapgood and O’Roarke are involved in something. Exactly what we aren’t sure, save that it has to do with a series of Radical disturbances in recent months. And that Lord Carfax fits in somewhere.“

“
What—
” Simon clunked the brandy decanter down. “Never mind. Go on.”

“O’Roarke brought in a man named Julien St. Juste, whom he’d worked with in Spain. St. Juste came to England and lodged in Hapgood’s house.”

“My—” Hapgood took a half step away from the bookcase.

“You admitted as much to Roth and me today,” Charles said. “Always clever to tell as much of the truth as possible. O’Roarke and St. Juste were both at the ball last night. I suspect you met with them there, Simon. Later last night someone killed St. Juste. Probably the same someone hired the men who attacked O’Roarke tonight.”

Raoul drew a sharp breath, but that might have been because Mélanie was dabbing at his wound with vinegar.

Simon strode back into the center of the library. “Look, Charles, your story’s a coherent scenario. As a dramatist, I appreciate the narrative construction. But as one of the principals, I feel compelled to point out that it contains barely a shred of truth. Not only have I never met a Julien St. Juste, I’d never even heard the name before last night.”

“But I had of course,” Raoul said. He looked from Charles to Mélanie. “You thought St. Juste was working for me?”

“It’s a logical assumption. Hold this.” Mélanie put his hand over the fresh bandage she’d placed over his wound. “Sam Lucan saw the two of you in conference a week ago since. Just after you'd finished a conversation with someone who matches Will's description.”

Raoul gripped the bandage. His gray eyes gleamed with amusement in a way that made him look very like Charles. “My dear Mrs. Fraser, even I don’t have time to plot with everyone I hold a conversation with.”

She wound a length of lint round his ribs to hold the bandage in place. “St. Juste isn’t everyone.”

“No. Which is why when I caught sight of him in that tavern—the Pig & Whistle, isn’t it?—quite by accident—“

“A very coincidental accident,” Charles said.

“Not so very,” Raoul said as Mélanie knotted the lint and snipped off the ends. “Considering St. Juste and I were both in London, it’s not surprising we both happened to be in a tavern frequented by— Peninsular veterans.”

Or in other words French agents, but Charles, Mélanie was relieved to see, let it pass. “And?” he said.

Raoul smoothed his bedraggled shirt down over his freshly bandaged chest and surveyed Charles with the same sang-froid as if he wore his usual crisp linen and immaculately cut coats. “As I said, I caught sight of St. Juste—and yes, I had been meeting with Gordon. Gordon left the tavern. I was curious about what St. Juste was doing there. So I stood him a bottle of whisky and spent an hour or so trying to discover what he was doing in London while he tried to discover the same about me. In the end, the bottle was empty, we were both more fuzzy-headed than was good for us, and neither of us had discovered anything.”

“And then?” Charles said.

“That was the last I saw of him.”

Mélanie snapped her medical supply box closed. “Until the Lydgates’ ball last night.”

Raoul turned to look at her. The light from the branch of candles on the sofa table flickered over the sharp, familiar, unreadable bones of his face. “As it happens I didn’t see him at the ball. Not even as a corpse. I thought it prudent to slip out once news of the murder spread through the ballroom. I didn't know he was the man who had been killed until just now."

“For God’s sake, R—Mr. O’Roarke, do you expect us to believe that?”

“I’d hardly tell such an absurd story if it wasn’t the truth.”

Charles stared down at Raoul, arms folded across his chest. “What were you doing at the ball?”

“Meeting Tanner.”

“Why?”

“We thought we were less likely to attract attention meeting in a crowd than in private.”

“What were you meeting about?”

Raoul and Simon exchanged glances. “I need hardly tell you that freedom of the press is in considerably worse straits in France now than it is in England,” Raoul said. “Which is saying a lot. But a number of French journalists are writing things that need to said. And heard. Things that the British Government would also be quick to suppress, given the chance. I was in Paris in December after I went to Ireland. I took it upon myself to carry several of these papers out of France with me. But I didn’t have the resources to have them printed. I’d already got myself thrown out of Madrid for publishing my own pamphlets. I had met Tanner briefly last autumn—“

“At our house,” Mélanie said. “After we got Colin back.” It had been Colin’s party and he’d asked to have both Raoul and Roth present, as they'd helped with his rescue. Raoul and Charles had been on their best behavior, and Mélanie had been happier than she dared admit. Raoul, she realized, had spent a long time talking to Simon after dinner. At the time, she’d merely been relieved everyone was getting along so amicably.

“Yes,” Raoul said. “Tanner said some kind things about my writings, and I expressed an admiration for his plays. I thought Tanner might know where to find a printer. He did.”

Charles’s gaze moved from Will to Hapgood.

“I have a press in my basement,” Hapgood said. “Used for unofficial purposes.”