Page 10 of A Gentleman’s Offer

9

Dominic was not so inconsiderate a master as to expect his servants to report to him on the outcome of their investigations when he returned from the ball in the early hours. A cool grey dawn was breaking across London as he let himself wearily into his house. Pargeter was very much the sort of eager person who might stay alert to give such a report, unasked, were it not for the fact that his master had made it very clear that nobody was ever to wait up for him on pain of his grave displeasure, since he was perfectly able to put himself to bed.

He slept badly, a prey to all manner of confused and confusing thoughts, and woke unrefreshed at ten. Once he’d bathed, dressed and breakfasted, he summoned Pargeter and Fishwick, and sat down with them, without a great deal of hope, to hear what they might have to tell him. He already knew that the excursion to Barnet and its environs to check on fashionable blonde travellers on the road to Scotland had borne no fruit.

‘I had a fair amount of success in tracking down my acquaintances, sir,’ the young man told him, his open face and bright dark eyes more sombre than usual, ‘but nothing beyond that. Two of the persons on your list are still employed as you describe, but none of them has taken any sudden absence from work or otherwise behaved in a manner that has raised any suspicion in their fellow servants. There’s been no hinting at mysterious matters or signs of worry in the last few days, or anything of that nature. Any one of them could have been approached discreetly and secreted a young lady away somewhere without the least noise or fuss, though certainly not in their master’s house. I can’t completely rule out their involvement – but I don’t believe it. You know how servants’ halls are, sir, for gossip and for sharp noticing. A housekeeper or a butler, if they know their business, they’re better than the Runners at ferreting hidden things out any day. And as for the third person, he’s taken a new situation and it’s in Scotland – left a couple of months ago. So that’s a dead end, as far as I can see.’

Sir Dominic handed him the list. ‘Thank you for trying, Pargeter,’ he said resignedly. ‘We always knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Will you be so good as to cross off the names you’ve eliminated?’

As he took up a pen, dipped it in ink and carefully did so, Fishwick said easily, ‘Well, sir, I knew some people in one or two of the same houses, but there was no point me and young Mr Pargeter doubling up our efforts, so to speak, so I took a couple of other names and set to work on them.’

‘Any luck?’ asked Dominic a shade impatiently. Fishwick, he knew, would take his time.

‘Maybe.’ He raised his hand pacifically. ‘Now, I’m not saying for definite, sir. But maybe.’ His auditors both sat forward eagerly as he went on, prolonging the moment, ‘I had the same result as Mr Pargeter did with the first cove I tried. I’m tolerably well acquainted with the very man on the list, as it happened. Footman, didn’t know nothing about anything, wouldn’t have had the wit to conceal it if he did.’

‘Jack…’ said his employer warningly.

Mr Fishwick grinned unrepentantly. ‘But in the second place I tried, the staff were all agog. Lord Purslake’s residence. Didn’t have to press them to talk, would have been hard to stop them. It was all concerning a lady’s maid – a respectable-seeming, quiet young female who’d come to them not long since from Lord Nightingale’s house, bettering herself by moving from working for some elderly widow mort to Lady Purslake, who’s no spring chicken herself but very fashionable. The girl had only been with them a couple of months or so, and now she’s vanished. No notice given, no attempt to collect her back wages – just gone one morning with what she could carry.’

‘Mrs Greystone’s former maid?’ said Dominic slowly. Fishwick nodded. ‘What’s her name – Jenny Wood, was it? And when did she go?’

‘Matter of five or six days ago, so around the time Miss Nightingale went too, seemingly. Which does make it seem like it might be more than a coincidence, to my mind.’

‘Good God, Jack, and to mine! Well done, man. I never thought this wild-goose chase would turn up anything, and yet it has, and on the first night of trying, too. But – don’t think I’m undervaluing your efforts, both of you – we now have two missing women instead of one. The mystery has become greater, not less, and I’m not sure we can call that progress. Even if they are together, apart from offering some reassurance to Miss Margaret that her sister might be safe and in another’s company, I don’t see how it gets us any further.’

‘Ah, now,’ said Fishwick with evident satisfaction, ‘that’s because I haven’t told you all!’

‘There’s a time and a place for being infuriatingly slow, Jack, and this is neither of them. Spit it out!’

‘The reason they were all so fired up about the business, sir , was that one of the footmen claims he saw the young abigail a night or so ago, very late, in a place where a decent female had no business to be. In the Garden, in fact, near the piazza, dressed up to the nines and going into a house that’s far from being honest – well, I expect you catch my drift.’

Dominic was frowning as he absorbed the impact of this news. This investigation was taking them to some strange and unexpected places – unwelcome ones, too. It was not beyond the bounds of possibility that a respectable working girl might tire of a life of domestic drudgery and decide to exchange it for the dubious advantages of selling herself, which was what a stay in Covent Garden and all the rest of it seemed to imply. No doubt such a thing had happened before. But even if this were so, did it not make it unlikely that Miss Nightingale could in fact be with her? For what possible reason? ‘I do understand you, not being a complete greenhorn. I suppose it would be idle to enquire if the young man is sure of what he saw?’

‘I think he is, sir, and I’ll tell you for why. It seems this fellow had taken a powerful liking to young Jenny, her being a spruce wench and well set up. He’d been laying siege to her virtue with a great deal of persistence, she not wanting anything to do with him and making it very clear, and him not letting up in spite of it. It caused a bit of a ruckus below stairs, because the women of the household thought that was why she’d left so good a place with no notice – to avoid his constant pestering. And they, and all the decent servants there, which is most of them, have been blaming him for it and making his life a misery with their reproaches. The lad’s a worthless one, a regular thatch-gallows, as you can imagine, but he don’t care for being put in the wrong. So he came back to them all indignant about what he’d seen. Seemingly he was happy to have them think the worse of him for being out on the town and ripe for a spree, if it meant he could damage Jenny’s reputation and paint her as a strumpet. To his mind, if she’s one who prays with her knees upwards, as the saying goes, why wouldn’t she lay herself out for him instead of pretending to be so virtuous? You know the sort of man, I expect – he has such a powerful sense of his own worth, he can’t by any means stomach being set down by a lass.’

Pargeter was looking rigidly disapproving, as well he might, but Dominic said thoughtfully, ‘I’m sure such creatures exist in every walk of life. He sounds a complete scoundrel. But if he’s obsessed with the poor girl, I suppose he would know her when he saw her, assuming he was relatively sober at the time.’

‘I’ll go bail he was. He does seem certain it was her, and by his own account he tried to follow her into the house, too, which to my mind makes it more likely he was telling the truth rather than spinning a Banbury tale afterwards about some half-glimpsed face in a crowd.’

‘So he remembers the precise building she entered, or he thought she entered?’

‘He does, and I could say I managed to get it out of him, but I’d be telling an untruth, for he was eager to tell me, and everyone who’d listen, that it was a big place on the corner of Henrietta Street, hard by the market. A flash bawdy house, for certain, in that location, and he grumbled because he said there was a bully-back keeping the door, some old bruiser who would by no means let him in, him plainly being a servant and not a fine buck of the first head such as the place caters to. I’ve been to run my peepers over the place in daylight, early this morning, but there was not a sign of life, and no wonder. You know such kens – they’re asleep when respectable folk are about their business, and only come to life when darkness falls.’

‘I admit nothing,’ Dominic said with a brief grin, ‘other than the fact that you have done well, and it must bear further investigation. Even though it seems unlikely, on the face of it, that Miss Nightingale should choose to hide herself away in such a place and with such a person – a lady’s maid who, to all appearances, has fallen into prostitution. I fear it must be a bizarre coincidence, and nothing more.’

‘You won’t tell her sister of it, sir, surely? It must cause her the most severe anxiety of mind!’ burst out the young valet. He seemed quite as overset by the news and its implications as he expected Miss Margaret Nightingale to be.

‘I think I must, Pargeter. My part in this whole sorry business is only to help – I can’t be concealing things from her just because they have an unseemly aspect. Clearly, though, if anyone is to go there and seek further news, it must be me, not her. That would be quite wrong, not to mention improper, and I cannot by any means permit it.’