The Thief-Taker : Memoirs of a Bow Street Runner (8 page)

“Lord Arthur?”

She nodded sheepishly.

“Is he not married?”

“In name only—his wife lives in the country. Their children are grown. Now, Henry, you know we have always agreed…”

Morton held up both his hands, rising to his full height. “Do not waste this soliloquy on me, who knows it by heart.”

But the room was small and she put herself between Morton and the door, her absurdly made-up face close to his, green eyes gazing out from a field of cool, white Lille powder.

“Tomorrow night I promise to you—no, Henry, I promise. And there will be no mistakes.” She watched
his face to gauge the effect of her pledge. “Now don't go running off—I have something for you.” She searched around her table and finally produced a leather-bound volume.

“There; by your pugilistic friend, Byron.”

“Hardly a friend,” Morton protested weakly, too aware that she patronised him. It was the new book,
Hebrew Melodies
.

She pressed it into his hands, and he felt his fingers close around the smooth calfskin. New volumes of poetry were rare, and expensive, pleasures.

“Will you stay for the performance?” she asked softly.

Morton wondered if anyone ever refused the wilful Arabella.

“Through the first act, at least.”

“Well, come see me then and we can visit until curtain call.”

There was a knock on her door just then—alerting Arabella to her entrance. She leaned forward to kiss Henry, remembered her face paint, and smiled as only Arabella could. Then she was out the door and hurrying off to her assignation with a full house of admirers.

Morton looked down at the book in his hands, opened it to the title page, and there, in a fine, legible hand, found:

To Mrs. Malibrant:

Whom I have long admired from afar.

Byron

Morton laughed. He could do nothing else.

M
orton sat reading Byron's newest work,
though his concentration flagged. Not enough sleep the previous night, what with Arabella sending him off to find that worthless jarvey. And then her “forgetting” all about their engagement. She hadn't forgotten at all, she'd just had a more interesting offer. Why did he even…?

But there were reasons.

He sighed and tossed down the poems, picking up the morning
Times
again and running his eye down the close columns of advertisements. Had he simply missed the inevitable little notice that indicated the thieves of Lord Elgin's antiquities were prepared to sell them back to their owner? At least he'd have that to lay at Sir Nathaniel's feet.

Not that the swag was very much: a few scraps of carved marble pilfered from the casually guarded heaps of the stuff in and about a shed in the inner courtyard of Burlington House. Elgin's supposedly magnificent collection, shipped back from Greece, was gathering dust
there as the government tried to decide whether to purchase it and thus whether—and this was much worse from the point of view of those parsimonious gentry—to spend the money to build a proper museum to house it. A British Museum. What an extravagance.

Sir Nathaniel Conant was, by and large, a man Morton esteemed. He was perhaps a bit naive in the ways of the criminal classes, but he would learn—if he stayed at Bow Street long enough. It bothered Morton to have offended him, and he rather badly wanted to make it right.

Despite combing the columns twice, Morton found no reference to the missing marbles. In disgust, he opened the paper to news of the more common variety. That fraud Mesmer had died, apparently. “
The discoverer of animal magnetism
,” the editor named him. Morton snorted. He'd thought the man dead for years, so obscure had the once-celebrated doctor become.

Inevitably he found his way to the accounts of Wellington's army and the looming conflict on the continent. The reports were several days out of date, of course; news from Belgium and France never appeared less than three or four days after the events. The
Times,
however, was usually fairly reliable and gathered information from disparate sources.

The foreign news was gathered under various headings. DUTCH MAIL, or FLANDERS PAPERS. Official accounts invariably appeared under the headings WAR DEPARTMENT or OFFICIAL BULLETIN, the latter sometimes subtitled “Downing Street.” Nothing new here.

But under the banner FRENCH MAIL Morton found a brief item originating from Paris regarding “the Emperor” (the
Times
itself, unlike its continental correspondents, never honoured him with this title but always
called him “Buonaparte”).
“It is creditably believed that the Emperor left Paris on June 12…”
Morton read, and then paused.

Everyone knew that the allies were gathering their armies for a thrust into France, and here was Napoleon leaving Paris, perhaps for Ostend, it was speculated. Morton felt a small, cold wave of apprehension wash through him. What if “the Emperor” had no intention of waiting for the allies to combine their forces?

But obviously Wellington would have better intelligence than the
Times,
Morton thought, and turned his attention back to the paper, poring over the various reports.

As he read, his manservant Wilkes slipped into the room, collecting the remains of Morton's tea. Wilkes had been rescued by Morton little more than a year ago. For many years he had served in a prominent household, but then had developed a noticeable shake in his hands—the palsy, it was feared. Morton had taken him on out of kindness. But there was also a part of the Runner—a part he was not unaware of—which took some satisfaction in employing as a gentleman's gentleman a man who had served an earl. Morton himself was only a “ha'penny gentleman,” someone who wasn't born to the life, but used his barely adequate income to keep up the appearance.

Fortunately Wilkes's condition had not seemed to worsen with time, and though he did break a bit of glass-ware now and then, Morton found him otherwise beyond criticism. And he learned a great deal from Wilkes, a great deal about gentlemen and their habits—not all of it flattering. Which also rather pleased him, in a different way.

He and the old man had developed an odd…
friendship. Morton could think of no other word for it. They had come to like each other. They did not, after all, have class standing between them.

Which is why Wilkes could say, as he did now, “You look troubled, sir.”

“Do I?” Morton asked, then let the paper fall. “Yes. Yes, I suppose I am.” He gestured to a chair. “Have I spoken to you about George Vaughan?”

“A fellow Bow Street man?”

“Yes.” And Morton found himself repeating the concerns he had earlier shared with Arabella. His manservant's response was rather more satisfactory.

“You think this man Vaughan corrupt, sir,” Wilkes concluded.

“Oh, yes, he's corrupt. But I would have said only in the manner and degree of his time. What Jimmy Presley's story suggests is something more.”

“Perhaps you should speak to Sir Nathaniel.”

“Yes, I likely should. Though do not forget that young Jimmy Presley was also involved—as was I, for that matter, for Jimmy and I made the arrest. It was all very tidily arranged.” Morton shook his head. “I doubt we could make a case of it. I'm sure Vaughan could produce someone claiming to be his informant in the matter, and who could gainsay him? Certainly not the Smeetons, that is certain. No, if Vaughan did arrange the whole thing he managed it carefully. And Jimmy Presley might be in more trouble than Vaughan—after all, he swore to things of which he had no direct knowledge.”

As Morton gazed down into the rain-washed street below, the old man asked: “And this other matter, sir— of the young man who was killed?”

“I don't know for certain that he was murdered, but there is something very odd there.”

“What does Lord Arthur Darley think?”

“Why do you ask?”

“He is an astute man.”

“Do you know him?”

“I know of him, sir. He is a man of parts, they say. He is well respected.”

Morton sipped his port. “What else can you tell me?”

“He is the younger son of the Earl of Cardiff. Served in the Home Office for a time, if memory does not fail me. A brother made the ultimate sacrifice at the Battle of the Nile. The present earl, Lord Arthur's older brother, is a buffoon whom Lord Arthur keeps afloat. Lord Arthur is a man known for his loyalty. His acquaintance is broad, though his sympathies lie with the artistic set. Frequents the theatre. The opera. Can shoot, ride to the hounds, and play the violin.”

“A man of parts,” Morton agreed. Darley sounded a little too much to be true. “You don't know the Glendinning family, by chance?”

Wilkes shook his head. “I'm sorry, sir.”

Morton gazed out the window again, over the glistening peaks of the houses opposite. Somewhere beyond, across the Channel, Wellington was seeking Bonaparte on the fields of France. It made everything else seem inconsequential. If Bonaparte could defeat the armies of Britain and Prussia…Well, there might be a need for another battle of Trafalgar, and there was no longer a Nelson to fight it. How much would the death of Halbert Glendinning mean then?

There was a light tapping from beyond the door, and Wilkes rose immediately to see who it might be.

Every Bow Street Runner had his own corps of informants, and it had taken the old man a while to get used to the people who appeared at Morton's door of an
evening. Every kind of riffraff they must have seemed to his eye, always with some unsavoury secret to disclose or comrade to betray. Such folk must have called rather infrequently on his previous master. Wilkes watched over Morton's silver with a certain fixity whenever they appeared.

But Henry Morton had chosen his lodgings in Rupert Street exactly with his informants in mind. Comprising the upper floor of a rambling wooden structure, a former inn from Jacobean times, the rooms were eccentric and unfashionable, but private. While his front doorway was guarded by his suspicious landlady, he also had a more secluded entrance, up two flights of outside stairs from a back lane. Mind you, it was not just peachers who ascended these stairs. Arabella or, be it admitted, her predecessors often came up the same way.

Neither the landlady nor her porter and other servants in the lower regions of the house had ever discovered Morton's occupation. As someone who bore at least the appearance of a gentleman, and could pay a gentleman's rent, it was not necessary that he have an occupation at all. Only Wilkes was familiar with the visitors his master entertained.

Now the manservant reappeared at the sitting-room door.

“One of my saunterers, Wilkes?” asked Morton.

“Not at all, sir. It is a lady.” The old man's voice had taken on a suitably grave tone. Clearly, this was a respectable female, too. “A Miss Louisa Hamilton, sir.”

The name seemed familiar, and then Morton remembered why.
“Poor Louisa,”
Darley had said, and now here she was.

“Please, show her in.”

Morton rose from his chair in time to greet a tall
woman, veiled and richly dressed in deep mourning. Beyond the door another female silhouette hovered, but did not enter.

He introduced himself. “May I… express my condolences at your loss,” he murmured politely. It was not necessary to assume he knew who had died, given her garb.

The veiled head dipped in acknowledgement, but she said nothing.

“Do come in, Miss Hamilton,” he said even more gently, and smiled and gestured with one hand. “Make yourself at ease.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, and then, to his surprise, gently pulled the sitting-room door closed on the two servants before taking the upholstered reading chair he indicated. A suggestion of unfamiliar perfume reached him.

Port-wine would not do for a woman, but Morton had some decent Portuguese sherry, and went to his sideboard and poured a glass. This he set down on the marble-topped pedestal beside her before resuming his own place. There was a moment of awkward silence, during which Morton had time to feel his curiosity begin to stir. It was really most odd.

Suddenly Miss Hamilton reached out and laid a hand on the book Arabella had given him earlier. “Ah, you are reading Byron,” she said, almost with relief, he thought.

“I've just begun,” Morton said.

“It seems to me that, in this collection, there are lyrics that belong among the best in the language.” She caressed the reddish-brown morocco and took her hand slowly away. Morton mentally took his hat off to his titled sparring partner. Byron must have every educated female in London reading his books—and dreaming of
him, too. Even Arabella, apparently: though who was the admired there seemed uncertain.

But Louisa Hamilton had not come to discuss Byron.

“I have spoken with Lord Arthur Darley,” she finally began.

When she turned her head a little Morton could make out a silhouette beneath the veil. Dark-haired and blue-eyed, with a generous mouth. There was something else, but he could not say what it was. Something in the way she looked at him, her head turned slightly away.