The Mask of Night (31 page)

“And you—“ Charles said to Will.

“Did the odd bit to help out. I’ve actually been corresponding with O’Roarke for some months now, and I’ve written several pamphlets of my own that Hapgood has unofficially published.”

Charles looked at Simon. “Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me?”

“Why the hell do you think? For the same reason I didn’t tell David. You’re both in Parliament. Supposedly upholding the law of the land. It would be a rather ugly burden to inform you I was in the process of breaking it. Besides—“

“You weren’t sure what we’d do?”

“To be blunt, no.”

“Jesus, Simon. We’re on the same side.”

“Sides get a bit blurry.”

Charles turned to Hapgood. “St. Juste was staying in your house.”

“I know. Now. Thanks to you and Mr. Roth.”

“You mean you didn’t know it until today?”

“How should I? He called himself Montford, as I told you. O’Roarke’s the only one who might have recognized him, and he never saw him. Not as my tenant. After you and Mr. Roth visited me this afternoon, I realized Montford must be the man who’d been killed at the Lydgates’ last night. I wasn’t sure why the devil he’d lodged with me or who he was, but it all began to look a bit suspicious. I sent messages to O’Roarke and Tanner and Gordon suggesting we meet this evening.”

Charles scraped a hand a hand through his hair. “That’s such an implausible story it almost has to be the truth as well. Or a very, very clever lie.”

Hapgood reached for his coffee cup. “I can’t answer for the others, Mr. Fraser, but I’m not that good a liar.”

“Somehow I doubt that, Mr. Hapgood. And yet—” Charles regarded the bookseller for a moment, then turned his gaze to Mélanie. She stared back at him. He’d said they’d both make up their minds for themselves. But she couldn’t be any surer of her own mind than he could of his.

Charles picked up his coffee cup from the library table. “What did St. Juste say to you at the Pig & Whistle?” he asked Raoul.

“As little as possible. When I asked him what had brought him to London he said, ‘Why pleasure of course. What else takes me anywhere?’”

Will hooked the wires of his cleaned spectacles over his ears. “This St. Juste—the man who was killed last night—you both knew him in Spain?”

“He was an agent for hire,” Raoul said, “who worked for both sides.” Thus neatly side-stepping the question of which side he and Mélanie had been on.

“So whatever he was doing in London, he could have been working for anyone.” Will looked at Charles. “Surely it’s occurred to you that he could have deliberately chosen to lodge at Hapgood’s without being in league with us. We could be his targets not his accomplices.”

“Oh, it’s occurred to me,” Charles said. “And I admit it looks more likely now.”

“You showed me a list earlier this evening,” Will said. “A list of Radical disturbances, many of which I was involved in and a number of which Simon and Hapgood were involved in as well. You said you found that in St. Juste’s rooms. Is that true?”

“Yes,” Charles said.

“And so you assumed that St. Juste had something to do with the disturbances as did we.”

“I didn’t assume it. It was one explanation.”

“But there’s someone other than Radicals who benefits from Radical disturbances that turn violent. In fact, only this evening you argued very persuasively that the violence works against the Radicals’ cause. Whereas it plays right into the Government’s hand.”

“It’s a possibility,” Charles agreed.

“It’s a damned sight more than a possibility.” Will pushed himself to his feet. “Lord Sidmouth has had agents provocateurs in Radical groups for years. Inciting Luddites to break machines, encouraging peaceful demonstraters to riot, stirring up the disaffected to break windows and start fires and generally wreak havoc. We know those men who were executed at Derby two years ago were framed by a Government spy. And with every act of violence more sober bourgeois and nervous aristocrats decide that even modest reform is the first step to the guillotine.”

“Quite,” Charles said.

“So if St. Juste was an agent for hire, suppose he wasn’t hired by any of us or any of our ilk. Suppose he was hired by the Government.”

“That was my wife’s first question last night, actually.” Charles looked at Raoul. “You must have tried other avenues to discover what St. Juste was doing in London.”

“With a singular lack of success. Whatever it was, he covered his tracks well. As I had my own concerns and had no reason to believe St. Juste’s business had to do with me, I let the matter drop."

“Who knew all of you were meeting in the park tonight?” Mélanie asked.

The four men exchanged glances.

“Only ourselves,” Simon said.

Charles perched on the arm of the sofa beside Mélanie. “Is this the first time you’ve been attacked since you’ve been in London?”

The others seemed taken aback by this question, but Raoul nodded as though being attacked was not anything so very out of the ordinary, which in his case was the truth.

“Tell me the exact contents of these pamphlets you're trying so hard to have printed,” Charles said.

“Editorials against suppression of free speech. An attack on corruption in the ministry of justice—

“Did this attack mention the Vicomte de Fancot?” Charles said.

“Among others. Is he significant?”

“He might be.” Charles looked at Mélanie. "He happens to be Sylvie St. Ives’s father.”

Chapter 22

I've stopped counting the times I've watched a comrade die or the hideous variations on the manner of their death. Bloody, bloody war.

Charles Fraser to David Mallinson

5 July, 1813

Billy Simcox slumped forward, the back of his head a mass of blood and gray slime. Miss Simcox screamed. So did half the onlookers. Tables and chairs upended as the gunman tore across the room. Roth cast a quick glance at Miss Dudley, who had her fingers to Billy Simcox’s neck, then spun round and lurched after the fleeing gunman.

The gunman was already at the door to the second room, leaving a trail of splintered furniture, spilled gin, and screaming customers. Roth skidded on the gin-soaked floorboards, bumped his knee on an upturned table, tangled his feet in the skirts of a woman who had fainted. The burly man at the door to the outer room caught his arm as he ran through the doorway. “What the bloody hell—“

“Bow Street business.” Roth wrenched away.

The gunman had jerked open the door to the street. Roth crossed the room in a half dozen strides, bumped into a silk-hatted young man, caught himself against the large barrel and dug a splinter into his palm. He raced through the door to the street only to run full tilt into a woman in a blue pelisse and plumed bonnet. He gripped her arms to steady them both and stumbled over one of the men lying in the street. He and the woman collapsed on the damp cobblestones in a tangle of worn greatcoat and musty blue velvet.

The man they’d fallen over grunted but didn’t open his eyes.

“What do you think you're doing?” The woman smelled of cheap violet water and teeth ill-cleaned for too many years. Roth pushed himself to his feet and extended his hand. His quarry was long gone. “My apologies, madam. It was a matter of some urgency.”

“Lady slapped your face, is that it?”

“Trying to apprehend a murderer, as it happens.”

The woman gave a grunt of disbelief, swept through the door of the gin shop, and stopped short. Roth pushed past her and strode back to the inner room. This time a path cleared before him. The gin shop owner, a bewhiskered man in a flesh-colored coat, met him half way across the room.

“I’m from Bow Street,” Roth said. “I’ll take charge.”

Suspicion warred with relief in the man’s face. Relief won. He nodded.

Roth found Bet Simcox staring down at her brother’s bloody and very dead body at their table in the inner room. Trenor put his arm round her. She didn’t pull away, but neither did she respond to his touch. Her gaze remained fixed on her brother’s corpse. “Who did this?”

“I’m not sure. The gunman got away.” Roth looked down at the blood soaked dark hair and sticky scalp that were all that was left of Billy Simcox. “He died instantly, Miss Simcox. He wouldn’t have suffered.”

“I should have known. The minute Sam found him the job, I should have—“

“You couldn’t have stopped this, Bet.” Trenor pulled her closer.

“Damn it, Sandy, what do you know about it?” She jerked away from him. “If you hadn’t blundered in here—“

“For what it’s worth,” Roth said, “I don’t think the gunman followed us. The timing isn’t right.”

“Betty,” Trenor said, “you know I’d give—“

“Don’t. Don’t pretend you understand. You and your brothers and sisters’ve had dozens of people to look after you your whole lives.”

“That’s not—“

Her palm connected with his cheek. “Billy was my brother. My younger brother. Nan can barely take care of herself. It was my job to look out for him.”

“Miss Simcox.” Laura Dudley moved to the younger girl’s side. “Forgive me, but I know how easy it is to blame oneself in such a case. How easy and how very misguided.”

Miss Simcox dashed a hand across her eyes. “How can you know—“

Miss Dudley regarded her with eyes haunted by ghosts. “Personal experience. Your brother was a man who made choices. If he loved you half as much as you loved him, he wouldn’t want you to blame yourself.”

Miss Simcox drew a sharp breath. Miss Dudley touched her arm. Roth expected Miss Simcox to pull away, as she had from Trenor, but instead she gave a raw sob and buried her face in Miss Dudley’s shoulder.

Miss Dudley closed her arms round the younger girl and looked at Roth over Miss Simcox’s shoulder. “Do you need Miss Simcox here longer?”

“No. I suggest we all return to Berkeley Square.”

Miss Simcox jerked away. “Billy—“

“I’ll send for an undertaker to take charge of him. You and your sister can make the funeral arrangements later.”

Miss Simcox bent down and pressed her lips to her brother’s forehead. “Did he do it?”

“Who?” Roth asked.

“The man Billy and the other man were working for. Raoul O’Roarke.”

“Charles? Mélanie? We need to talk.” Simon’s voice came through the door to their bedchamber.

"Come in," Charles said.

The conference in the library had broken up a quarter hour since. He and Mélanie had persuaded Simon, O'Roarke, Will, and Hapgood to stay the night on account of the late hour and the potential danger. Having shown their guests to their rooms, they had barely had time to begin to discuss the events of the evening.

Simon paused, just beyond the door, and looked from Charles, standing beside the fireplace, to Mélanie, sitting at her dressing table. “When you thought we were working with St. Juste, you said the plot had something to do with Lord Carfax.”

Charles picked up the poker and stirred the coals. His brain seemed to be moving one step behind the need to come up with explanations.

“For God’s sake.” Simon strode across the room to face him. “I see why you didn’t want to mention whatever it is in front of the others. That’s why I didn’t pursue it until we could be private.”

Charles shook the poker, sending fragments of ash onto the coals. “Because you were afraid they might use information about Carfax for their own political ends?”

“It’s a possibility. God knows he stands against pretty much everything they all believe. I believe.”

Charles returned the poker to its polished brass stand and looked at his friend. Their first meeting, in an Oxford commons with the smell of roast beef and claret in the air and candles flickering on the long tables, was etched firmly in his memory. “Quite.”

“You think
I’d
use the information against Carfax? We’re talking about David’s father.”

“Difficult to choose between two loyalties,” Charles said. “Carfax has been keeping track of my investigation. Lucinda overheard him talking to an informant. She went to David, and David came to me."

Simon closed his eyes. "That can't have been easy for David."

"Nothing to do with his father has been easy for David for as long as I can remember."

"But Carfax asked you to investigate."

"Castlereagh would have insisted on it whatever Carfax did. The clever move was for Carfax to insist as well. But Carfax seems to be afraid of what I might discover."

"Do you think Carfax hired St. Juste as Will suspects?” Simon's voice was conversational, but his eyes held the knowledge of what this would mean for David.

"It doesn't look that way," Charles said. "We have reason to think St. Juste was trying to acquire a hold on Carfax."

"Acquire a hold how?"

"He sought out Bel in France last autumn," Mélanie said.

"And— Oh, my God."

“Simon.” Mélanie sprang to her feet. “Don’t tell me you suspected—”

"That Bel had a lover?” Simon dropped his hand to grip the mantle. “Nothing so coherent. But the cracks in that marriage have been obvious for a long time.”

“Good God, I don’t know what’s happened to my character reading skills,” Mélanie said.