Page 15 of The Lady and the Secret Lord (The Duke’s Men #3)

R obin’s early morning report to Mayne did not begin well. Mayne did not invite Robin to sit. “Jones, was it not our understanding that you were to act with discretion and bring no public notice to the case?”

“Yes, sir.” Robin stood to attention in the pre-dawn lamplight of Mayne’s office.

“Then what’s this I hear?” Mayne asked. “About two constables from the H Division taking orders from a man out of uniform who removed a worker bodily from a gas pipe ditch in full view of a dozen witnesses?”

“The man removed, James Leary, was the footman who had charge of the Marchmont boy when he disappeared.”

“You questioned him?”

“He was recruited by an organization calling itself the Benevolent Assistance League. A position was made ready for him at Marchmont House, for which he presented false papers, supplied by a Samuel Shattuck, a rag man with a shop in Soho who makes his rounds in St. James’s.”

“What did this Leary say? Do we know where the boy is?” Mayne’s voice was still more of a bark than speech.

“Not yet, sir.”

Mayne’s thick brows rose.

“On the afternoon of the fire, Leary was told to turn the boy over to another man from the league. Leary, who has young nephews, distrusted the look of the fellow and eluded him by taking the boy into the crowd at the House of Lords fire. Late in the evening, when the boy wanted to go home, Leary was in a bind. He led the boy into Soho and advised him to hide. Then Leary went into hiding himself.”

“Why? Why not take the boy home? Why not go to the police?”

“Leary has a record, sir, and he believed, on information that the league supplied, that the boy was a bastard and that to repay his benefactor in the league he had to remove the bastard from standing in the way of the true heir.”

“Utter nonsense. Who would believe such a thing?”

“Whoever is behind this scheme was misled by letters between the late earl and his wife. In the last months of her life, she stayed with her ailing father at his vicarage in Sussex and translated letters from a dead Roman Britain named Galba about his wife’s infidelity and his son’s illegitimacy. We believe that someone saw the letters at the time of the late earl’s death, and mistook their meaning.

“Originally, Leary was told to steal the letters to prove Lady Marchmont’s infidelity, but he didn’t recognize their value because he doesn’t read Latin. His handlers then asked him to turn the boy over to them.”

“Do you have any idea who’s behind this league, then?”

“That is our next line of inquiry, sir.”

The frown of a man with his patience severely strained creased Mayne’s broad forehead. Robin waited to be dismissed.

“What I want to hear, Jones, is that you’ve found the boy, not that you’ve made a spectacle of the department or jeopardized my plans for its future.”

*

Phoebe had not reached a firm opinion about Mr. Shattuck when she and Jones arrived at the used-clothing shop. It was the sixth day of the new search. Phoebe had marked her calendar upon rising. For a year and a day, she had missed her brother. The hour was early, that time of day when servants stirred, and those free to pursue amusement until all hours, at last sought their beds. Shattuck’s shop door was open, and a handcart, piled high with a jumble of cotton gowns stood at the entrance. Phoebe started to go around the cart when she received a little shock. On the other side of the street the Benevolent Assistance League sign was gone. She turned to Jones, but he was ahead of her, sprinting across the street. He tried the door, found it locked, and peered in at the window.

“It’s empty,” he said. He produced a short metal rod from his pocket and applied it to the door lock until it yielded. Phoebe followed him into a small wood-paneled ante-chamber from which two doors opened, one on their left, and one straight ahead.

Phoebe opened the door to her left and found another wood-paneled room, with a window on the street. The room, although unfurnished, had the look of an office like Richard Greenwood’s. Faint early morning light from the window illuminated the paneling and bare floor, scratched where someone must have dragged furniture. The grate in the fireplace was ash-filled and smelled of a recent blaze, charred bits of paper stirred as Phoebe’s skirts disturbed the air. Phoebe knelt and retrieved the corner of a sheet of paper. There was little left of what had been written there. The hand resembled the hand that had written Leary’s letter, but the salutation read, Dear Mi before the browned edge.

Farther back among the ashes was the charred fragment of something red. She went in search of Jones. He knelt in a corner of a large empty room, shadowy from lack of light, high-ceilinged and cold. It had the unfinished look of a warehouse, unlike the paneled front room. “What have you found?” she asked.

“See this? What do you make of it?” He pointed to a trail of white dots, each the size of a ha’penny. The dots clustered in a group and then moved off toward the back of the room, regularly spaced. Each dot left a rim with an intricate swirling center.

Phoebe knelt next to him and touched one of the dots with a fingertip. “It’s chalk or something like chalk, the sort you’d find on a ballroom floor. How odd!”

He rose and followed the trail of dots to a door onto a narrow alley. “Whatever they kept in here, and it can’t have been much, has been removed. Anything in the front room?”

“It’s empty, too. Someone has been burning papers in the grate,” she said.

“Show me.” He followed Phoebe, but stopped at the door to the front room. “There’s something else,” he said. “A scent. Do you smell it? Musk? Bergamot?”

She shook her head. She detected only the scent of the burnt paper, which she showed him. “There’s something more in the grate you should see.” She pointed out the blackened scrap of red among the crumbling embers. He knelt, held his hand above the embers briefly, and then fished the red scrap out of the ashes. It dangled from the metal rod he’d used earlier, unmistakably a fragment of a man’s red silk tie.

“I don’t understand,” Phoebe said.

Jones went to the window and looked out. “This office must have been a front. It looked legitimate enough with a desk and chairs. A man like Leary wouldn’t question it. He was invited in, received his orders, and was sent off to someplace like Marchmont House. The ratepayer records say the league, or its front, Thames Property Recovery, Ltd., has been here for ten years.”

“Ten years! You think this… league… has been what… luring men like Leary into spying and theft for ten years?”

He turned to her. “And perhaps women. Doesn’t your scrap say Dear Mi ?”

“It does. But I still don’t understand. How does the league benefit from placing spies or thieves in households?”

One of his brows went up. “I imagine the league charges a good bit for dealing with an inconvenient heir.”

Phoebe felt a chill. Jones saw a world in which people who ought to be bound together by ties of blood and name and history could turn on each other. He meant, of course, that someone in her family had turned to the league, that someone was willing to believe ill of her mother and bring harm to Andrew. He meant that resentment could turn deadly.

“Are you well?” he asked.

“Perfectly.” She stiffened her spine. If Jones was right, someone she knew wanted Andrew dead.

“Come,” he said. “Let’s see whether we can get Shattuck to talk.”

*

Robin knew at once that they were too late to talk to Shattuck. Except for the abandoned handcart at the door, the shop looked ready for customers, but mixed in with the usual smells of sweat and decay was the metallic odor of blood. He held up a hand to stop Phoebe from coming farther into the shop, but he was too late for that, too.

She gasped and pointed to the lower half of a man’s legs on the floor, protruding from the opening to the long counter.

“Wait, here.” Robin strode forward. Shattuck lay sprawled face down in the narrow opening, his head turned to the right, his chin resting in a dark pool of his own blood. Robin boosted himself up onto the counter and swung his legs over it. On the other side, he knelt at the man’s head.

Shattuck’s throat had been slit. His assailant had likely come at him from behind, and Shattuck had staggered or been pushed forward. His hands were bloodied as if he’d tried to grab his own throat to stop the flow of blood. One hand had caught the edge of the counter before he’d fallen. He had perhaps tried to get behind the counter to create a barrier or find a weapon. The blood under Shattuck had thickened but not dried. Robin touched the back of his hand to Shattuck’s cheek. The body was still warm, like the embers of the fire in the empty office of the Benevolent Assistance League.

He stared down the length of the body and found Phoebe Marchmont kneeling at Shattuck’s feet, one hand resting gently on the man’s ankle. Robin expected to see shock, but her eyes were full of sober sympathy.

“He did not deserve this cruel death, did he?” she said.

“No.” She was right. There was a meanness to Shattuck’s death, out of proportion to his sins or crimes. He had died because he was a little bent and not above petty fraud. He knew things about the league, perhaps knew faces. Whoever killed him was a far more dangerous sort of criminal. And now Robin and Phoebe had lost whatever Shattuck could have told them.

“Look at his collar,” she said. “They’ve taken the red tie.”

Robin gently lifted the chin. The heavy head lolled in his hand. The body had not yet stiffened. Shattuck’s blood-soaked collar had been slit open. One side of the stained linen gaped with the button in its hole. The underside of the chin bore the thin scoring of a blade. Robin looked around for signs of the assailant, but whoever removed Shattuck’s tie had avoided stepping in his blood.

Robin checked his watch. London was stirring. The shop was open, anyone could walk in, and likely would. The beat constable would come round soon. A whole chain of official steps would begin leading to a coroner’s inquest. Shattuck had been dead perhaps less than an hour, and Robin had no idea where the killer had gone, near or far.

He stood up. It had been a mistake to bring Phoebe. He had miscalculated the danger to her posed by the league. At least two of its members had seen her dressed in her widow’s attire. “You can’t be here.”

“I am here. What are you talking about?” She rose, too. “Do we report the death? Summon the police?”

“Yes,” he said. “But you do not.”

She looked affronted. His mind raced ahead. In addition to the danger to her person, there was the danger to the case. If she were found by the authorities, the Yard’s secret detective work could be exposed. Mayne would be furious. Robin pushed up onto the counter, and swung his legs back over to her side. He grabbed her hand and led her deep into the gloom of the long, narrow shop to a spot concealed by a tall basket of shoes, and a row of gowns hanging on the wall.

“Wait here.” He closed the shop door, and as he returned to her, snagged a lilac muslin gown from the wall. “There will be an inquest. If you’re found here, you’re a witness. You don’t want to be called as a witness. You don’t want to lie to the coroner. And we don’t want anyone to connect Shattuck’s death to the search for your brother. Here, put this on.” He shoved the lilac gown into her hands.

“Oh.” She clutched the gown, staring at him, unmoving. Her usually quick mind didn’t seem to catch his urgency. He didn’t know if she was in shock. He didn’t know if it was possible for her to change her clothes as he asked. She was a lady. Ladies needed maids. They wore endless layers of silk and buckram. They had corsets that laced at the back and gowns that closed with rows of tiny buttons up their spines.

“Start with the hat,” he urged. He took the dress and draped it over the basket of shoes.

Understanding flashed in her eyes. She reached for the velvet and silk confection perched on her head. It came off easily, and she set it aside. Then she began to unhook her bodice. Some part of his brain registered that the bodice opened in the front, that there would be a corset and padding, a chemise and skin. Her hands, small and white against the black silk, made quick work of the buttons hidden under a fold of silk. He swallowed. He could not turn away.

Reason returned. Any minute Shattuck’s early customers would arrive, and Robin didn’t know where the murderer had gone. The emptiness of the league office across the street suggested that at least for now the league had vanished, but still the murderer or an accomplice could be nearby, watching to see who came and what happened. A watcher would have seen Robin and Phoebe, as Mrs. Kendall, enter the shop.

Behind him silk and crinoline rustled. He set his jaw. He wanted her unrecognizable as his widowed companion of the previous few days. He wanted her back in her own house, where throats did not get slit. There was a level of ruthlessness in a man who was willing to slit another man’s throat. A killer like that had to believe that he was so entitled, so wronged, so cheated out of his due in life that any means was justified to get his own back.

Robin didn’t see who that man was in this case yet. Phoebe Marchmont didn’t think such a person existed in her family, not in her father’s elderly cousin, nor in that cousin’s son. She seemed to have a high regard for people of rank, investing them with a chivalric code of honor that in Robin’s experience was rare whatever a man’s place in society. He thought differently. The effort to prove the missing boy a bastard could only come from a family member who wished to claim the inheritance for himself, or believed that Andrew’s existence deprived him of his due. Even if such a man existed, how had he come to find the league? The league could not advertise its services. It relied on Shattuck to recruit desperate men to do its work, but how did it recruit or seduce customers?

He glanced through the shop window. Time was passing. The traffic on the street increasing. “Do you need my help?” he asked.

“I’ve got it, or nearly so.” Her voice was muffled by fabric.

A groan from the rear of the store stopped Robin’s reply. He lifted a finger to his lips to signal Phoebe to silence and went to investigate.

In the very back of the store was a little room with a desk, a bed, and a wardrobe. Someone had torn the room apart, emptied all the drawers. Outside the room Constable Trigg sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, holding his head.

“Trigg, what happened to you?”

Trigg put a hand to the stiff leather collar of his uniform. “I think someone tried to slit my throat.” Trigg lifted his chin, and Robin saw the slash mark across the leather.

“Where were you? Tell me what you remember.”

“I was just inside the door. I came around the corner on my beat and thought I saw a light moving in that office across the way, the one that you told me to watch.”

“And?”

“Mr. Shattuck came out.”

“Out of the office of the Benevolent Assistance League?”

Trigg nodded. “He opened his shop and pulled a handcart out onto the street. Then he went inside. The light in the office went out, and I was going to keep going on my beat, but a fellow came out of the office and went into Shattuck’s place. I waited, but he didn’t come out, and Shattuck didn’t finish opening as he usually does, so I went inside.

“I didn’t see Shattuck. I called, but no answer. Then I was jumped. The fellow had a knife, brought it right across my throat. I jabbed my truncheon in his ribs and tried to get turned round to face him. He hooked the knife in my helmet strap. It came off. Then something hit my head.”

“You were just inside the door?”

Trigg nodded gingerly and wobbled to his feet. He was a sturdy fellow of middle height and solid girth.

“Can you show me?” They began to walk, Robin keeping to Trigg’s right, directing the constable to look ahead. “Shattuck is dead. Likely killed immediately before you entered the shop. You didn’t see his body when you came in?”

The sight of Shattuck’s sprawled body stopped Trigg. He reached for the notebook in his pocket. “He was alive when I saw him.”

Robin put a hand on Trigg’s shoulder. “Who is your relief on the beat?”

“Didsbury.”

“Good. Find Didsbury. I’ll keep the scene secure until you return. Then you can make your notes, notify your sergeant, get the body properly looked after, and keep the public away.”

“Of course, sir.” Trigg put on his helmet and winced. With one last look at the body, he turned toward the door.

Robin returned to Phoebe. In the shapeless, faded lilac-checked dress, she looked like a girl of the neighborhood.

“Now what?”

“Let’s get you home. It’s possible we were watched when we entered Shattuck’s. There must be no sign that you were ever here.” He handed her a carpet bag for the black clothes.

She took the bag and began stuffing the black skirts into it. “Are you telling me I can’t continue the search? That I must leave it to you?” She closed the bag with a snap.

“Yes.” He saw no point in sugarcoating it. “You brought the case to the Yard. Now let us do our work.” He took her arm, slim and soft in his grip, and pulled her to the front of the shop. In spite of the padding around her waist, she weighed nothing compared to Constable Trigg.

“Because you’re a man.”

“No. Because I’m the detective. And you are—”

“—a mere source?”

“There is no mere source. We just lost a mere source. We are hiding another. The danger is too great.”

“Surely the danger to me is not greater than the danger to my young brother who appears to be the object of a murderous hunt.” She clasped the carpet bag to her chest, looking stubborn.

Outside the shop, people passed, glancing curiously at Shattuck’s abandoned handcart. At any moment someone could enter. Robin needed to convince Phoebe to go back to Marchmont House where she could disappear into her other self. He took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him.

“Can you stay home today? Be indisposed? Send your regrets to anyone expecting you?”

The gray-blue eyes flashed. The stubborn point of her chin tilted up. “While you do what?”

“Turn Soho upside down looking for your brother.” He made it a solemn promise.

She wasn’t easily appeased. “How can you do that? You are hardly invisible. People spot you as a copper. Women notice you.”

He ignored her objection. He had a plan. “Promise me you will get the first cab back to Marchmont House. And I will find your brother.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“You heard it from Tanner. I’m not him.” Her expression said she still doubted. She wanted to find Andrew, that was the key. So, Robin would have to make her think she was in the way of the search.

“Promise me you will find me before midnight and report your progress, and I will return to Marchmont House.” She was still giving orders, and that settled it. No matter how good her instincts were, or how quick her mind, he had to make her believe that she was hindering not helping him. He needed her safe.

“Excuse me. I report to Mayne, not some chit with her lofty nose in the air who thinks she can command the police, who thinks she knows detecting. From the beginning, your interference in my work has been a hindrance. You think that disguise of yours gives you freedom to come and go and cock-up this case. If you want your brother back, you must stay where you belong.”

She didn’t move. She had the look of a man standing in the ring taking blows, a man who wouldn’t go down no matter how punishing those blows were. Her remarkable eyes were wide with betrayal. He took her arm, hauled her to the shop door. The walkway was crowded with passersby. He waited for a moment when she could slip into a little group of passing women and gave her a push.

“Promise me, you’ll find him,” she said.

He gritted his teeth. “I promise to find your brother.”

He let her go, and she slipped through the door and mixed with the passing women.