Page 11 of The Lady and the Secret Lord (The Duke’s Men #3)

T he fog lingered through the morning. Robin took the local beat policeman from E Division with him to Waterbury’s, where the head clerk was eager to cooperate with a man in uniform. Theft and a flood of fraudulent watches from the continent hurt the trade. In short order, Robin had a name and a direction for the purchaser of the watch.

Three years earlier, James Avery Leary had lived on Great Marlborough Street. Robin knew the street in the northwest corner of Soho, prosperous-looking, though more commercial than it must have once been, with a mix of music publishers, artists’ studios, and residences. He found the Leary apartment in a four-story brick building now tenanted by a master carpenter’s family and was told by the wife, with a sad shake of her head, that Leary had taken his sister Molly and her two boys to Berwick Street some time ago.

Berwick Street was narrow, and even in the fog, noisy and crowded with the barrows of street vendors. It was far from the worst address in London, but men and women alike, huddled against the cold, regarded Robin with suspicion and met his inquiries with silence. And he was being followed.

He stopped at a barrow, where a boy sold jacket potatoes, and after a coin changed hands, asked the young vendor who in the neighborhood was likely to know its inhabitants.

“Yer a copper, ain’t ye?” the boy said with a shrug, as if apologizing for making Robin. “Try Number Six.”

The boy was also able to identify the man following Robin. “Can’t miss ’im. E’s got a red tie.”

Number Six at the south end of the street belonged to a surgeon, who remembered Leary bringing in a boy with an inflamed ear. He directed Robin to Leary’s address, a two-room flat on the ground floor of a building divided into at least ten family dwellings.

“Must be a popular fellow, this Leary. You are not the first to come looking for him,” the surgeon told him.

When Robin stepped back into Berwick Street, he could see Leary’s building. Two women on the steps tended to a listless infant. One of the two emptied a pail of soiled water into the gully hole at the foot of the steps. If another party had come to the surgeon’s office looking for Leary, then surely his flat had been discovered. But Robin doubted that Leary had been found, or the man in the red tie would not be following Robin. Robin suspected that red tie wanted to see what Robin knew and where Robin would lead him. Shattuck, or someone informed by him, had used the same means of searching for Leary as Robin used, the watch and the serial number. And whoever was looking for Leary was likely looking for the Marchmont boy as well.

Robin started down Berwick Street on the opposite side, winding between the vendors’ barrows, keeping his gaze on a building farther down the street. When he reached it, he stopped and made a note in his notebook. Then he made an abrupt right turn, and then another, and ducked into an ancient furniture shop on Wardour Street. He let the man with the red tie pass the shop, and waited for him to return. When the man made his second pass, heading north, Robin left the shop following red tie .

It was clear from the man’s steady pace and the direction of his gaze that he was no longer thinking of Robin. He would have someone to report to. Robin had no illusion that the man would lead him directly to the head of the organization whatever sort of organization it was, but he was not surprised when the fellow turned onto Dean Street. Robin hung back a little more and watched red tie enter the Benevolent Assistance League building. In minutes Shattuck made a furtive dash for the building and was admitted.

Robin was tempted to knock on the door, push his way in, and shake some answers out of the two men he knew to be inside. It would be satisfying. But that was the old way, Tanner’s way, and Tanner had not found the missing boy. First, Robin would use the resources of the department. He would find out who the ratepayer for the property was and what comings and goings the beat cop had observed. He wanted to know how many men were likely to be inside and whether any of them entered Shattuck’s shop.

Wearing the red tie was a strategy. Whoever wore it would be noticed. The thing about the red tie is that one looked at it and not at the face. Once the wearer removed that tie, he disappeared into the crowd. Robin would not recognize the fellow again. Leary had fled from them, and Robin had to assume that in spite of the sign on the building, its inhabitants were not benevolent.

As for Leary’s old place, Robin had an idea that Mrs. Kendall might be the one to get Leary’s former neighbors to speak.

*

Phoebe came up the grand staircase, wondering if she could escape her great-aunt Serafina’s drawing room without major bloodshed. As a child she would pause at the foot of the looming stairs that wrapped around the great echoing marble hall. It was strange to look up at the underside of those stairs, hanging in the air, an architectural marvel. Her mother would take Phoebe’s hand and lean down to whisper, “Be brave. We must remind your great-aunt of the unfortunate fact of our existence.”

Phoebe understood her mother’s words more clearly now. Mama was speaking as much to herself as to Phoebe, summoning courage in the face of Great-Aunt’s disdain. But each visit hurt. When Phoebe asked her mother why they weren’t wanted, her mother explained, “Your papa married me against his family’s wishes.”

Later Phoebe learned that arrangements had been underway for her father to marry a woman of rank and fortune when his friendship with an obscure country vicar and fellow enthusiast for Roman ruins had led him to fall in love with and marry plain Susan Clark, the vicar’s classicist daughter.

At the foot of the stairs, like her mother before her, Phoebe squared her shoulders and put a smile on her face.

In the blue drawing room, Serafina sat in a gold damask chair near the fire. Age had pared her striking beauty down to fine bones, sharp edges, and great gray eyes. She wore lavender silk, a white lace pelerine around her shoulders, and a cameo brooch the size of a tea saucer. Near her was a sofa reserved for favored guests. Humbler visitors contented themselves with distant chairs and settees and approached only when signaled by a footman in livery.

Cousin Mary came to Phoebe’s side to lend support as Phoebe curtsied to her great-aunt and met her critical eye.

“So, you’ve left off perpetual mourning. Very wise, dear. Black never suited your complexion. At least you resemble your father in that. You must take advantage of those Marchmont looks while you have them. It’s best to get a husband this season.”

Great-Aunt turned to Mary. “Mary, do advise Phoebe on her clothes and a companion. You have a list of candidates for her to consider.”

“Is a companion necessary?” Phoebe sent Mary a quick glance. A companion would restrict Phoebe’s movements just when she needed to meet Jones.

Her great-aunt’s brows lifted.

At Phoebe’s side Mary gave an apologetic shrug. “Last year you did not receive callers or appear in society, and people were willing to overlook the irregularities of your situation, Phoebe. But now that you will be out, you must have a proper companion.”

“I have Mrs. Kendall.” Phoebe wanted to protest that she had no interest in being out . She kept her gaze on her great-aunt. There was no softening there. Great-Aunt had spoken. The exchange was over.

Mary took Phoebe’s arm and steered her away. “Phoebe, I know how close you are to Mrs. Kendall. She’s been with you forever, but I think you’ll find Mrs. Lucy Walters refreshingly lively, and of course, young. When you leave today, I’ll give you her papers from the agency. She has wonderful references.”

Mary led Phoebe to three young ladies. The two Misses Hungerford and Lady Constance Rivington had been at school together as Phoebe and her friends had been, but Miss Hester Britt’s Academy was unknown to them and beneath their notice. As the conversation required very little of Phoebe, her thoughts drifted back to her meeting with Jones earlier. He misjudged her entirely if he thought she would let him conduct his investigation without her.

She was thinking about the watch when she realized she had missed some turn the conversation had taken, and found her companions staring at her. Her cousin nudged her, and Phoebe realized that an invitation had been extended.

“Yes, thank you,” she replied. Mary linked arms with Phoebe and led her to a table of refreshments. “Oh dear. Have I been very rude? What did I agree to?”

“A musical evening and supper that Lady Constance’s mother is giving tonight. It’s perfect for you. There won’t be dancing, but you’ll be seen, and we can work on your wardrobe in the meantime. Your sleeves are sadly out of fashion.”

“Are they?”

“Goose, surely you noticed,” said Mary. “The Rivington girl may be silly and ignorant, but she is beautifully dressed, and her mother’s musicale will draw the best people in town at this time of year.”

“Thank you, Mary. I’m afraid I was preoccupied. You won’t mind if I take my leave?”

“Not at all, but do take the papers for Lucy Walters. Braxton will have them for you at the door. And don’t forget the musicale. Henry and I will come for you.”

“Thank you, Mary. I’ll take a look at the papers the first chance I get.” Phoebe smiled. She had no intention of hiring a lady’s companion. Her double life was complicated enough. But she would do her cousin the courtesy of looking at the woman’s references once she heard from Jones.

*

Phoebe descended from the cab in the northwest corner of Soho Square in front of Trotter’s Bazaar and paid the driver. The fog had vanished, but a sullen gray haze hung over the city behind which the sun was a pale disc. She was pleased to wear the black gown again. It meant she was doing something, taking steps to find Andrew, not sitting closeted and comforted at home as she had for the first search. As Mrs. Kendall, she was a bolder version of herself.

Jones’s message directed her to enter the bazaar and look for a standing that sold umbrellas. Women retailers at the various standings, rented to them for pennies a foot, sold art supplies, books, toys, fancy embroidered work, and much more. Phoebe found a likely standing halfway down the wide center aisle, where a young woman, modestly attired, stood behind a counter lined with umbrellas. Phoebe asked to see the woman’s black umbrellas, and waited for Jones to approach.

He came up beside her, and she fixed her regard on the umbrellas. “You sent for me.”

“I can use your help.”

That made her glance at him. He frowned down at her from his great height. She lowered her gaze to the button on his chest where her veil had caught earlier. The fragment of black lace was gone. “You needn’t look so unhappy about it,” she said. “What do you need me to do?”

She turned toward the wide aisle and opened a silk umbrella. It was delicate and pretty with a lace-fringed canopy and ribs covered with raised silk cords.

“The watch dealer had an address for Boyle, who is actually James Leary, by the way. I checked, but Leary had moved on. From there, I traced him to a pair of rooms on Berwick Street. He has undoubtedly left that place as well, but the new tenants may know something.”

Jones was having trouble getting to the point, which was unlike him. “And?”

He stared at the painted wall panel behind the counter, his jaw tight. “I want you to talk to them, to see what they know.”

She closed the umbrella. There must be a reason he wasn’t going to talk to the tenants himself. He liked to do the talking. She sneaked a glance his way. Ladies eyed him in his plain brown coat. Without any of the elegancies that marked the fashionable gentleman, with no silk waistcoat, no gold watch fob, no jeweled pin in his tie, he drew their notice. She thought it was his height, his breadth of shoulder, and his fair hair. Or perhaps it was his confidence. He was sure of himself in a way that made him stand out from his surroundings. So why did he need Phoebe’s help?

She picked up a second black umbrella. It was plainer than the first, with stronger ribs. The cloth was oil-coated cotton, and the canopy was a bit broader. It might actually hold off the rain. “You went to Berwick Street?”

“I was identified as a police officer.” His voice was clipped, his mouth a tight line.

“Oh. So, no one talked. And you think the tenants in Leary’s building might talk to… a woman, a widow?”

“If you want to find Leary.”

He knew she did. How were they to find Andrew without questioning Leary? She closed the second umbrella. “So, I’m to stroll down a street where I’ve never been and stop to ask strangers what became of their neighbor?”

“Can you do it?”

Phoebe set the second umbrella on the counter. The idea of walking Berwick Street felt dangerous in a way that entering Shattuck’s shop had not. Jones wanted her to do it not because she was clever and capable, but because he had been too noticeable there. No one around them in the bazaar paid the least attention to her. Even the sales girl seemed to see only Jones. Phoebe was nearly invisible, which is what she’d hoped to be, but she doubted that her disguise would work on Berwick Street. Her looks might pass, but when she opened her mouth, she would surely mark herself as out of place. “What sort of street is it?”

He gave her an approving look. “Narrow, unruly, crowded with vendors’ barrows, lined with cheap lodgings. There’s a surgery at the south end. I will wait for you there.”

He assumed she’d do what he asked. There was more she wanted to know, but she was suddenly impatient to begin. It was the fourth day of the new search. To find Boyle, or Leary, was to get closer to Andrew. “I’ll do it.”

“Are you are sure?” His glance questioned her willingness.

“I can handle vegetable carts.”

“Good. Buy your umbrella, and we’ll go.”

“What?”

He picked up the second umbrella, the sturdy one, and touched the pointed tip of the ferrule. “I want you armed. I was followed on Berwick Street.”

Phoebe digested that piece of information as she followed Jones out of the bazaar. She stopped at another standing to buy a basket. Under cover of that transaction, he explained that Leary had a sister named Molly who had two sons, and that at the building identified as Leary’s former dwelling, Jones had observed two female occupants tending an infant.

“Who followed you?” she asked. He had rather skipped over that detail.

“A man in a red tie.”

Jones led the way west into the narrower streets of Soho. Phoebe trailed him, mulling over that man in the red tie. It was rather obvious neckwear, and Phoebe wondered what it meant. They headed beyond the neighborhood of Shattuck’s shop into an area where Phoebe had to admit she had not ventured before, past warehouses, a leather-cutting factory, an auction room, and a theater for hire. As she walked, she thought about what she could possibly say to the women Jones described. It was one thing to deceive Shattuck, but another to lie to those whose circumstances might be difficult, subject to removals from one living space to another, dependent on men who could lose their positions.

Berwick Street when they reached it was as crowded and lively, as full of laughter and haggling, as Jones had described. He strode on as Phoebe turned into the street. She settled the basket over her arm and entered the scene.

Vendors called out to her and thrust their wares her way. She kept her requests simple, and no one seemed to remark her accent. In no time she filled the basket with four oranges, a jacket potato, a kidney pie, and a jar of milk. She resisted an offer from the man skinning eels, and reached her destination, a narrow building of soot-blackened yellow brick. The afternoon shadows had lengthened, and no women lingered on the steps. Phoebe tried the door and found that it led to a dark hall with a narrow stair up one side. The boards underfoot were gritty and dust had settled into the corners around the foot of the stairs.

“Hello,” Phoebe called. “Looking for Molly Leary.” Her voice echoed up the stair, but no answer came. She counted three doors on her left down the hall. Her next tactic would be to knock on them. She shouted again.

The last door in the hall opened, and a thin young woman stepped out wearing a brown wool gown with a soiled apron wrapped around her middle. “Ain’t ’ere,” she said.

Phoebe hurried forward, her skirts brushing the walls of the narrow hall, the umbrella and basket an awkward pair over her arm. “Do you know where she’s gone?” she asked.

“’ew are yew?” the woman demanded.

“Mrs. Kendall.”

“A Mrs. , are ye?” The woman looked Phoebe up and down. “That’s more than Molly Leary was.”

“A widow,” Phoebe corrected. She lifted her veil to see better in the dim hall. “Mrs. Kendall,” she repeated.

“Hah,” said the other. “Did yer man die yesterday? Ye’ve not been wearin’ those weeds long. They’d fetch good money at Shattuck’s.”

“Do you know where Molly Leary has gone?” Phoebe asked again.

“Sorry.” The woman gave a shake of her head. Her dull blonde hair was pulled into a sagging knot at her nape that threatened to come undone.

“Now Liza don’t say that,” came a voice from within. “Ask Mrs. Kendall in.”

Once again Liza gave Phoebe a quick skeptical scrutiny. Then with a shrug she stepped aside and motioned Phoebe through the open door.

It was a broom closet of a room with no furnishings except for a low quilt-covered pallet against one dingy wall, where another woman sat holding a thin baby of perhaps six months of age. From a reeking pail in one corner came the odor of soiled nappies. Phoebe had held Andrew as a baby in a sunny corner of the nursery at Marchmont House, Andrew wrapped in clean soft cotton, plump and rosy and sweet smelling. At the time, with their mother dead, Phoebe had believed Andrew to be a most unfortunate child. She had not understood the extent of his blessings.

“What is his name?” she asked the young mother.

“Richard,” said the girl, giving the baby’s head a fond stroke. “I’m Jenny.”

“Hah,” said Liza, squeezing past Phoebe’s skirts, and plopping down on the pallet. “That boy’s just Dicky, or ’e’ll ’ave to learn to use ’is fists.”

Phoebe’s skirts took up far too much of the tiny bare floor area. The umbrella scraped the boards, and there was no place to put her basket, only a shelf on one wall with a pair of mugs, a pot, a candle holder, no candle, and three small plates.

“Did you come to ’elp Molly, Mrs. Kendall?” asked Jenny. “She could use a bit of ’elp.”

“I believe I can help her,” Phoebe said firmly. That might not be Jones’s plan, but Phoebe could see that something needed to be done, especially if Molly Leary had lost this living space. Phoebe shuddered to think what lesser accommodations waited for a woman who could not pay the rent of Berwick Street. “Her brother lost his situation a year ago, didn’t he?”

“So ’e said,” Liza interrupted. “’e came back ’ere the day after the fire, stinkin’ of smoke, ’is clothes wet and covered in ash, and said they ’ad to up and go. Like that. ’ad to take everything. Leave nothin’ behind.”

“They were running away.” Jenny confirmed.

“ ’e was runnin’ more like,” said Liza.

“Molly was sad,” Jenny added. “She ’ad to take ’er boys from the Irish school just over on Dean Street.”

“Molly didn’t say where they were going?” Phoebe asked.

Both women shook their heads, but Jenny added, “She said that her brother would have to lower his pride and go where there’s digging work for water or gas pipes.”

The baby stirred in his mother’s arms, and Phoebe set her basket on the floor.

“When I find her, I will offer what help I can. Thank you for speaking with me.”

Liza scowled, but Jenny smiled. “I hope you find her soon.”