Chapter Ten
“What are we looking for again?” Atticus posed the question as he peered up the cold flue in what had been Harry’s bedroom on Dingle Court.
“A ledger book,” I replied, “or some sort of tally sheets. A journal, possibly, and it might not look like an accounting. In winter, hiding something up the chimney would have been a dicey proposition, but that just means you should have a look anyhow.”
I reverted to old training, making a mental grid of the room and starting my visual inspection in a corner of the ceiling. No signs of disturbed plaster, no irregularities in the molding. Harry’s bedchamber had been comfortable—Dingle Court was traditionally a mistress’s abode—but many notches below the grandeur on offer at the ducal residence.
And now, the place having gone years without refurbishing, summer morning light revealed a fading establishment. The half-rolled-up carpet, once a strikingly rich swirl of peacock hues, was turning pastel, the bed hangings had long since been taken down, the blue lace curtains had been victimized by moths. The side of the bed frame closest to the windows had faded while the side facing away from the windows retained a hint of its old beeswax shine.
Cheadle and his footmen ought to take the place in hand.
Harry had been nearly as tall as I am. Hiding something overhead would have occurred to him, but the room’s architecture didn’t lend itself to such a handy solution.
“Nothing up the chimbly,” Atticus said, shaking a paw grimy with coal dust.
I tossed him a square of linen. “Remind me to allot you some plain handkerchiefs. A gentleman should never be without. Use your clean hand to tap the walls.”
He transferred a considerable quantity of dirt from his fingers to my handkerchief. “Why am I thumpin’ the walls?”
“A well-made structure is reinforced at regular intervals. You should find a pattern. Tap across that wall, and the sound will change every two feet or so. That’s where a supporting timber, or stud, has been placed to keep the building upright. Ceilings and floors are reinforced with joists. If you tap along, and the sound changes where it oughtn’t, you might have found something.” A slow process, usually a last resort.
“And then we’ll knock down the wall?” The boy apparently liked that idea.
“And then we will assess the wainscoting, but the general idea with a hiding place is to exploit the spaces already available, not create a racket hacking into walls or destroying the chimney.”
I turned my attention to the dressing closet, looking for false bottoms in the empty wardrobe and clothespress, tapping the walls, and generally getting nowhere.
“Shame ain’t nobody livin’ here,” Atticus said. “Alley is wide enough for carriages. Quiet street, plenty of trees, has a garden.”
Not a garden, a rioting patch of weeds, wild flowers, and a few maples that could no longer be referred to as saplings. Such neglect was unlike Arthur.
“Say a prayer that Harry didn’t secret his papers in that garden.”
“He were here in winter. Digging up frozen ground is a right pain in the arse.”
“The kitchen hearth would be on an outside wall, and the ground along that wall wouldn’t freeze. The heat from the flue would have warmed the soil to a good depth, given that the kitchen is belowstairs. Gardeners know that and sometimes put their cold frames in such locations.”
Atticus left off rapping the wall to the rhythm of “God Save the King.” “Where do you learn such things?”
From being a pest like you long ago . “I asked a lot of questions. I paid attention. We’ll have to search the damned kitchen.”
“I like kitchens.”
“You like food and warmth and biding where I can’t see what mischief you get up to. You like eavesdropping on the gossip in the servants’ hall.”
Atticus fisted his hands on his hips. “I learn things that way. Mr. Banter will be back next Wednesday to commence sitting for his portrait. Did you know that?”
I knew I was searching for a needle in a haystack, and Harry had been better at hiding needles than keeping his pizzle out of sight. I could not sit on the bed to have a think—the mattress had been removed long since, lest the mice take untoward notions—but I could pace.
“What is your most precious possession, Atticus?”
“According to you, me gentlemanly good name, ’cept I ain’t a gent.”
“According to you?”
He pushed dark hair from his eyes and surveyed me as I perambulated about the room. “I have a locket. Was me mum’s. I don’t wear it, because the pickpockets might get it, and ’sides, it’s a locket. She give it t’ me when I were little.”
I was abruptly ashamed of my question. At the foundling homes, illiterate mothers would leave a token with their babies—a bent penny, a twist of braided ribbons—some unique identifier such that when the mother “got back on her feet,” she could, in theory, redeem her baby from the care of the charity.
The ribbons crumbled to dust, the babies died, and the sorrow never ended.
“You will have to show me the locket sometime,” I said, examining the mantel and pilasters. “If we take it to the shops on Ludgate, one of the jewelers might recognize it as his own handiwork.”
“And then what? So he made a little bit of pretty years ago. Don’t mean nothing.”
“If he made the piece on commission, he might have a record of who ordered the work, and that gives us the start of a trail that might lead to your family. Where do you keep the locket?” Atticus’s antecedents were mysterious. His previous employer had more or less purchased him at a tender age from one of the London poorhouses, taken him to the shires, and turned him into a general dogsbody belowstairs.
He had no education, no known family, and few manners, but he was a quick study.
“I have a box under me bed. We all do. Look under a fella’s bed, and you’re asking for trouble.”
Even at fancy public schools, that rule held, mostly because a boy could claim no other patch of real estate in the whole establishment save the space beneath his bed.
The ropes had long since been removed from the bed frame I now beheld, and the floorboards below appeared entirely regular. I nonetheless heaved the bed frame aside and used the heel of my boot to tap along the floorboards.
“Odd sort of dance, that,” Atticus said, shoving the tattered curtains away to perch on the windowsill. “Somebody only half looked after this place. These curtains woulda been pretty once.”
They were ghostly now.
“I’ll have a word with Cheadle.” The boy was right—the carpet had been only partially rolled up, such that the portion left lying flat on the floor would be more faded than the rolled-up part. The curtains should have been taken down and stored with lavender or camphor sachets. The bed frame should have been dismantled and stored in the dressing closet, or some other place where sun could not work its evils on the wood.
I completed a circuit of heel-tapping. “Nothing.”
Atticus hopped down from the windowsill. “Off to the kitchen?”
Kitchens were busy places. In winter, the footmen might have preferred to sleep near the cozy hearth, rather than shiver the night away in their garret dormitory. The cook would have been up well before dawn to put bread in the oven, and the housekeeper’s quarters were often immediately proximate to the kitchen.
Then too, Harry ought by rights to have never trespassed belowstairs. A bachelor’s temporary quarters—particularly Harry’s temporary quarters—would have been no citadel of protocol, but still, he’d have been noticed on every foray into the servants’ domain.
Searching the whole house could take days, and I did not have days.
Leander did not have days. Clothilda Hammerschmidt might have already begun whispering in the ears of the penny press about a downtrodden seamstress taken advantage of by a ducal son, her child scorned by his wealthy relations.
When I’d taken Leander and his nursemaid back to Mrs. Danforth’s after our outing, I’d had a discussion with their hostess regarding the inappropriateness of using corporal punishment on grieving children. Her reaction had been tight-lipped and resentful.
“What?” Atticus asked as I continued visually probing the room. “It’s a bedroom. Fer restin’ and rompin’. Some people read their Bible before they go to sleep. Some people say prayers on their knees.”
Not Harry, though he had been a voracious reader, mostly of newspapers, another spying habit.
I studied the relics of habitation yet remaining in the room—the half-rolled-up carpet, the bed frame, the blackened hearth, the tattered curtains. The dingy windows let in a gloomy version of morning sunshine, but on a winter night, if Harry were inclined to read, he’d need…
The only sconce in the room was on the wall opposite the windows, and that made sense. Other illumination would be provided by the fire in the hearth and by candles on the mantel or bedside table, though where…?
“The bed wasn’t near the outside wall in the middle of winter,” I said, shifting to regard the inner wall, the one adorned by the lone sconce. “The bed was away from the chill of the windows, directly beneath a source of artificial light. Somebody moved the bed around to make a start on rolling up the carpet.”
I crossed the room and resumed heel-tapping. Within a minute, I’d found the loose floorboard. I used the knife I carried in my boot to reveal a space between joists, and to my fierce satisfaction, that space held an oilskin bag.
The tar coating had cracked at the seams, and the lot was covered in dust, but the contents remained secure.
“Love a duck,” Atticus whispered, looking over my shoulder. “Will ye look at that.”
I took the bag to the window and eased the drawstrings open. Harry had troubled to stash some sort of scent bag in with his journal, still faintly redolent of thyme. I set that aside, set aside a sizable cache of coins, and withdrew a slim leather-bound notebook such as I was still prone to carrying with me at all times.
Harry hadn’t bothered to encode his entries, but he’d used only initials and dates to record most transactions. From Mr. LHS ￡3 received on Dec. 11. To Mme B ￡2 disbursed on Dec. 17. To Ld TS ￡7 paid on Jan. 5. From Visc Ht ￡15 received on Jan. 23. To Mme B another ￡5 on Feb. 5. On and on, the entries ran, until the end of February, when they abruptly stopped.
“Well?” Atticus asked. “What’s it say?”
One name had been spelled out near the bottom of the last page and underlined. I had the sense that Harry was preparing to leave Town and reminding himself to tend to that bit of business before he took ship.
“My brother variously paid, was paid by, and ended up owing a small fortune to, one of London’s most fashionable madames. He was also doing business with a few courtesy lords and at least one viscount.”
“Leander’s mum was a fancy piece?”
I wanted to put my hand over Atticus’s mouth, but he’d leaped to the most reasonable conclusion.
“If so, she could afford to do better by her boy than to entrust him to an ailing military widow.” Then too, the professional ladies took precautions against conception, precautions far from foolproof. More to the point, Harry had not favored brothels, fancy or otherwise.
“I don’t care for the nunneries,” Atticus said, moving away. “They’ll snatch a boy up, will he, nill he.”
“They won’t snatch you. You’re in Waltham livery, more or less.” Modified to allow him the sartorial glory of a London tiger’s striped jacket.
“The whores pay attention to that?” Clearly, it had never occurred to Atticus that a badge of office could afford protection.
“Their livelihood depends on keeping powerful men happy. Waltham is very powerful, when he’s of a mind to be. If you prefer that I drop you back at the house, I’m happy to oblige, but I’ll be traveling on to Mrs. Bellassai’s establishment.”
Atticus wrinkled his nose. “I’ll go with you, and I’m keeping me jacket on.”
Mrs. Bellassai’s might have been any fine home in Mayfair, right down to the dignified butler at the front door, matching footmen in the parlor, and fresh roses on every sideboard. I’d left Atticus cooling his heels in the mews—extensive mews, around back, of course—where a coin to the grooms had ensured the lad would be kept out of trouble.
“My lord, a pleasure.” My hostess made me a proper curtsey, though I was somewhat surprised to find her awake before noon.
“Mrs. Bellassai, thank you for receiving me.”
She gestured to a tufted sofa done up in imperial purple. The parlor was well appointed—silk on the walls, a Mediterranean coastal landscape above the mantel—but she’d chosen bolder colors than those typically favored in fashionable Society. Violet and burgundy with splashes of emerald and peach.
Unusual, while Mrs. Bellassai herself embodied Renaissance perfection. She was the dark-haired angel of serene gaze and flawless complexion who knew exactly how to wear a decolletage that only hinted at her abundant charms.
“A man, particularly a titled man, calling on me during daylight hours provokes my curiosity,” she said, taking a seat in a matching wing chair. “How is your dear brother?”
As opening salvos went, that one whistled by mere inches from my self-possession. The number of souls who’d refer to Arthur as a dear anything… I counted myself, Lady Ophelia, Hyperia at a stretch, and Banter. Beowulf, if apples were involved.
“His Grace is thriving, thank you. He’s preparing for extended travel on the Continent, and the prospect of a change of scene seems to have lifted his spirits.”
“Good. He is too serious by half, and travel broadens the mind. He’s taking Banter with him?”
The question was not how she knew these things—Arthur and Banter had made no secret of their plans whatsoever—but why she bothered to impress me with her knowledge.
“A journey shared is a journey made more interesting,” I said. “Shall I convey your good wishes to Waltham?”
“You need not. He knows he has them. A lovely man, and no, I’ve never had occasion to appreciate his amatory prowess. Do not be disrespectful. Waltham supports a certain charity that I also favor, and he supports it generously.” She held up a hand. “Do not pry. His privacy matters to him and to me.”
“His privacy matters to me as well,” I said. “As it happens, my visit is occasioned not by Waltham, but by my late brother Harry.”
Her manner became less fierce and more gracious. “My condolences on your loss, my lord. Lord Harry had a streak of daring that boded ill for his longevity.”
“He had a streak of bad luck. Might we leave it at that?”
A footman bearing a silver tray stood in the open doorway. Even in this house, I would have expected the noon hour to have merited no more than the everyday service.
“Come in, Peter. I will pour out.”
Peter left the offerings on the low table before Mrs. Bellassai, bowed, and withdrew. He was gorgeous, though dark-haired and an inch or so short of the requisite six feet.
“His twin is named Paul, and the uncle who raised them is a Dissenting preacher. They assure me that my coin out-preaches their uncle’s theology. In a few years, they will return to the shires with full pockets, and I will miss them sorely.”
I had never been introduced to Mrs. Bellassai, but a night in her establishment was considered a rite of passage among young men. Forever after, they could casually allude to that sophisticated bit of self-indulgence as if it had become their second home.
Mrs. Bellassai serves the most excellent sangria…
Mrs. Bellassai’s establishment favors good cotton sheets, none of this silk nonsense…
The ladies at Mrs. Bellassai’s play better chess than you do, my good fellow…
And so forth.
That streak of daring, or simply curiosity, might have sent Harry through Mrs. Bellassai’s doors initially. Something else had kept him doing business with the lady.
“Tea, my lord?” She picked up the silver pot and poured a cup, the angle of her body perfectly mimicking the graceful curve of the spout. The scent of jasmine wafted up, delicate and soothing.
“Please. A dash of honey.”
She fixed my tea and passed it over. “How are you getting on? One heard the most alarming rumors.”
“Thank you for your concern. I am not back to one hundred percent, and I might never be. I am glad to be alive.”
“Good. Harry would not want you to mope. A moping man with your great advantages would be an offense against God. Put the nightmares behind you.”
How many nightmares had she put behind her? I heard a trace of an accent in her words, not French, to which I was acutely attuned in all its many dialects, though Italian didn’t strike me as a perfect match either. I wasn’t quite as knowledgeable of Spanish dialects, but I could rule out Basque.
“The blue spectacles are intriguing,” she said, taking up her tea. “You might start a fashion.”
“The blue spectacles protect my eyes from bright sunshine. I will apologize in advance for taking up a less than genteel topic, but I am in something of a hurry.”
She sipped placidly. “You do not want to be seen at my humble establishment?”
“I do not want a young child, possibly Harry’s son, to disappear into the stews, where his own mother might hold him for ransom.”
She set down her cup. “Explain.”
I gave my report as succinctly as if Wellington himself were attending the recitation, and Mrs. Bellassai appeared to attend me closely.
“Harry would not have frolicked with an opera dancer,” she said, putting several sandwiches on a plate and passing it over. “Eat. You are too thin, and yes, we will feed the rascally little familiar you brought with you.”
“The hospitality is appreciated.” The sandwiches weren’t the usual polite gesture involving a dab of butter and a hint of ham. Some creamy cheese had been applied with a generous hand, and the ham—lightly smoked—was abundant as well.
“In my experience, Harry would frolic where he was told to,” I said, “provided the direction came from a general or senior colonel. Harry’s battles were not typically waged amid smoking cannon and charging cavalry.”
“One surmised as much. Nor were yours.”
I hadn’t the aptitude for the sort of skirmishing she invited. Harry had doubtless confided in her. She and Arthur apparently had some sort of attenuated connection, and thus she had the advantage of me. I was a supplicant, and she was a woman inured to male importuning.
“In any case, Harry’s activities here in London might well have included fathering a child. The putative mother has died, and the boy’s antecedents on all sides are proving difficult to establish. I’m trying to deduce whether Harry kept a regular mistress during the winter of 1810-1811, and if so, who she was.”
Mrs. Bellassai wrinkled an aquiline nose. “Parliament left us no peace that year. My ladies were unrelentingly busy. Lord Harry was home on leave. His last extended leave in London, if I’m not mistaken.”
“You are not.”
She munched a sandwich, and I waited. How much would she tell me? How reliable would her information be?
“Harry was still keeping Lady Clarissa Valmond at his side that year,” Mrs. Bellassai said. “And he asked me about how to deal with an unplanned conception. I gave him some names, but I doubt that child was his.”
“Lady Clarissa says not, and your instincts support her. Why?”
“Harry was vain. If the child had been his, he’d have been proud of himself. He would have married Lady Clarissa—they understood one another quite well—and gone right back to Spain.”
“Harry might not have been aware this child was conceived,” I said. “And then he was hard to locate once he returned to Spain.” Impossible to locate for weeks on end, at least from a distance. “I did, however, find this secreted in his previous London quarters.”
I withdrew the notebook from my breast pocket and passed it over. Mrs. Bellassai flipped it open and perused the contents. She might have been a librarian trying to decide how to shelve an obscure manuscript, and yet, even engaged in that academic exercise, she was attractive.
“He should have destroyed this,” she said, handing it back. “There you see evidence of his arrogance. Such a record could cause many problems, not the least of them for you and your dear brother.”
“Was Harry a blackmailer? Courtesy lords and a few peers are noted among the transactions.”
“He did not blackmail anybody. I would have gelded him for such foolishness, but he did accept payments and make payments about which I asked few questions. Some were payments directed by his superiors. Others were…”
“On his own initiative?”
She poured us both more tea. “For want of better terms, yes. My job was to convert sums paid to the currency of Harry’s choosing. An establishment such as mine is paid in the coin of many lands and occasionally in jewels or other valuables. I am regularly in possession of foreign currency, and I occasionally convert pounds and pence into dollars or francs. My ladies send money home, and they hail from all over.”
“You were Harry’s banker?”
“His currency broker and sometimes his banking assistant. He’d send me money from Spain—or wherever he was—and I would do with it as he directed. That all stopped about three months before he died, but then, I often didn’t hear from him for several months.”
“Harry moved a lot of money in a short space of time,” I said. “Did any of those funds go to a particular woman?”
“You’d have to ask his banker, my lord, or his solicitors. Harry had a significant amount of cash at his disposal, and many of his expenses would have been paid in coin. Even his men of business would not have known of those transactions. For a ducal heir to support a by-blow, though, wasn’t a matter Harry would feel compelled to hide.”
He’d save his coin for matters more deserving of discretion, in other words. “Harry never mentioned a child to you, or a particular woman other than Lady Clarissa? No regimental widow or domestic who’d caught his eye?”
“He could be discreet, else he’d never have lasted in his chosen profession, would he?” She held out a plate of cakes, and I took one. She took two.
“He could be convincingly mendacious,” I said. “Not quite the same thing as discreet.” The sweet turned out to be some sort of cream cake-biscuit combination. The base was mild cheese—sheep or goat, perhaps—flavored with lemon and garnished with orange zest. A hint of spirits came through the sweetness.
I’d had this distinctive dessert once before, and the richness had been nigh overwhelming at the time.
“You don’t ask my opinion,” Mrs. Bellassai said, “but I am supposed to be an expert on the male of the species, so humor me. Lord Harry seemed caught between a boy’s rebellion and a grown man’s respect for duty. He suspected he was to become the duke, and while being a duke should carry certain responsibilities, the status itself is enviable. Harry nevertheless resented that he wasn’t to have any choice in the matter, and that resentment occasionally elbowed his better nature aside.”
“Your theory has merit,” I said slowly. “Harry could be both astonishingly selfish and very kind.” He’d been kind, in his fashion, to Clarissa. Also selfish toward her.
“And now he is dead, and you are concerned for a child that might not even be his.” She polished off her second cake with a relish some would call unseemly. “If the boy is Harry’s, then Harry did not know of this child when he left England. He might have made some provision for the lad at a later point, but I doubt the situation had come to Harry’s notice during that endless winter. The bankers should be able to tell you more.”
Her assessment of the situation was more knowledgeable than my own. This unconventional call had borne some fruit.
“I’m off to Coutts and Company, then. Wish me luck.”
“Coutts?” She dusted her hands and rose. “I know Waltham banks there, as does half of Mayfair.”
“My grandfather switched our accounts to Coutts more than fifty years ago. He believed the Scots have a knack for managing money.”
She licked her thumb, and that gesture, which should have been seductive, struck me as simply human, appealingly human, and not in the least flirtatious.
“Fine for your grandfather,” she said, “but this was Lord Harry, and coin he’d find difficult to explain to the family ciphers. He kept his funds at Wentworth’s. Good luck getting any information out of them. I keep my money there, and I would trust the discretion of a Wentworth banker over that of any priest or solicitor.”
Wentworth’s was a relatively new organization. The clientele was not exclusive, and the owner was some dour fellow from the Yorkshire dales. His institution appeared to prosper at a time when banks regularly failed.
“I’m off to Wentworth’s, then. My thanks for your hospitality.”
She curtseyed properly. “Give my regards to His Grace.”
I bowed and should have taken my leave. Nonetheless, I hesitated. I was unlikely to cross paths with her again, and she was, by some lights, an expert.
“Mrs. Bellassai, have you ever known a man to lose his capacity for…” I gestured vaguely in the direction of the floor above us, “disporting, without any apparent physical cause?”
She returned to the tray and helped herself to another cake, which I accounted an act of consideration for my dignity.
“Yes. Frequently, in fact, but men don’t generally speak of it with other men. My ladies are occasionally called upon to attempt to remedy matters, but that seldom helps and can make the situation worse.”
“What does help?”
She bit off half the cake. “Time and love, if a man is lucky to have both.”
Good God. A madame was not supposed to know how to pronounce the word love with that much innocent sincerity.
“I have shocked you,” she said, taking a sniff of the uneaten half of her sweet. “The day becomes memorable. By ‘love,’ I mean the things a man delights in doing, the people he adores to be with, the books he relishes on every reading, the home he treasures… These all nourish his spirit, and it is the spirit that often affects the humors. Tell this man whose humors are at low ebb to recall how to love and be loved, and the rest might well right itself.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“You will remember me to the duke?”
“I will convey your personal and kind regards, and my thanks for your hospitality.” I left her eyeing the tea tray and saw myself out. That last little exchange should have mortified me. I was instead encouraged.
I had lost much during the war. Self-assurance, confidence, some arrogance—might as well be honest—and a dear brother and countless friends. But I had not lost the ability to love, to enjoy life, to treasure what mattered. If anything, going to war had made me more appreciative of the many blessings in my life, and thus I had reason to hope my manly powers would someday be restored to me.
I collected Atticus from the mews, where he was raptly observing a game of dice while consuming a meat pie.
“Are we for home?” he asked around the last mouthful of his feast. He took up the perch behind me on the curricle and waved farewell to his new best friends.
“We are not.” I gave the horse leave to walk on. “You can tell no one where we’ve been, you little scamp. The occasion calls for discretion.”
“Somebody should write a discreet song about the meat pies Mrs. Bellassai serves. Was beef, not mutton, and had lots of cheese in it and taties. I could eat three of ’em at one go.”
“You cannot mention the meat pie either. You’d hurt Mrs. Gwinnett’s feelings.” Cook was sensitive about her art, and one crossed her at peril to one’s digestion. “We’re off to pay a call on a banker.”
“You skint, guv?”
“If I were short of funds, that would be none of your business, provided your wages were paid timely. I am not short of funds, but I am investigating Lord Harry’s finances, and the trail leads to a banker’s doorstep.”
“Somebody could make a fortune off those meat pies. Feller would visit Mrs. B for her kitchen if he wasn’t inclined for other reasons.”
“Hush your rude mouth, child, or you will be walking home.”
“I could handle the ribbons.”
“This is not Beecham, and I said hush. I need to think.”
“About what?”
Incorrigible boy. Dear, incorrigible boy. “About why Harry relied on a lady from Corsica to handle some very delicate transactions for him.”
“Corsica? As in the Corsican Monster? Don’t nobody like to be from Corsica these days. I wonder if those meat pies were some Corsican treat?”
I could not be sure of my theory, but the sweets on the tray— fiadone— were a distinctive Corsican treat—and Mrs. Bellassai’s faint, charming accent had hinted of the Corsu tongue.
Gracious powers, what had Harry been mixed up in, and did it have anything to do with a small, orphaned boy?