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

O utside the commissioner’s office, Trajan rose, and wagged his tail at Phoebe. She took up his lead and followed Mr. Jones down a flight of steps and out into the yard. A sharp breeze from the river had blown away the earlier fog, and revealed a poor and mean space, not in keeping with Phoebe’s idea of a proper government office. Trajan trotted over to relieve himself in some grass at the base of a brick wall.

Mr. Jones hardly seemed aware of her. With long swift strides he led her to a loading area for coal carts and up a short flight of stairs. At the door, she commanded Trajan to wait.

“My office,” he said, unlocking the door. “Do not expect the comforts the commissioner enjoys.” He stood aside for her to enter.

In the cold, dim room, Phoebe shivered, glad of the padding inside Mrs. K’s dress. Mr. Jones moved to get a fire going and light a lamp. The wick flared, releasing its burnt scent and illuminating the gloom.

Jutting out from two sides of the wood-paneled room were heavy desks, eight of them, like ships docked at a wharf. Small windows high above let in pale light. Tall closed cabinets lined the back of the room, and sprawling maps of London, dotted with pins, covered the walls above the desks. The distinctive curve of the Thames snaked through the grid of London streets. To see the vast sprawl of the great city was daunting. Andrew could be concealed anywhere, in neighborhoods she had never entered, or thought to enter. She shook herself. The messenger’s note said he was safe . That was the thing to remember. There was hope for the first time in a year.

Mr. Jones shed his coat and dragged a wooden chair next to the desk. He was right that the room had none of the polish of Mayne’s office with its gentlemanly furnishings. Mr. Jones’s office reminded her of the coffee warehouse where she often met her old school friends who now worked for Greenwood’s Almanac .

“Ma’am,” he said, offering her a seat. “Take me back to the beginning, the night the boy disappeared.”

Phoebe took the offered chair. She clasped her hands in her lap, and steadied herself. Mr. Jones watched her closely, unnerving in his size and his barely concealed reluctance to help her. She reminded herself that Mayne had endorsed him. Mr. Jones might think she had nothing to offer the investigation, but she had rehearsed her telling of the events with Mrs. K’s help.

“Very well,” she said. “On the day of the fire, my employer’s cousins called at Marchmont House. When they arrived, Andrew left for the park with…” she hesitated “…the dog, his old nurse, Nanny Fellows, and John Boyle, a young footman. Andrew had a shilling to get milk from one of the stalls.”

Mr. Jones looked up. “In St. James Park? What time was this?”

“It must have gone three. They were expected back at four.” Even as she said it, a familiar heaviness settled in her and pinned her to the chair.

“And what happened?” he asked.

“My employer’s cousins were leaving when the dog came back unattended. He had no collar or lead. By then traffic filled the street, and the sky had gone orange. The smell of smoke was overwhelming. The coachman reported that the House of Lords was on fire, and my employer’s cousin Henry offered the carriage to look for Andrew. As they approached the park, a great crowd of people and carriages rushed toward the fire.”

“After six, then? Go on,” he said.

“Henry Marchmont, the cousin, went with the carriage toward the fire. He guessed that Andrew and the footman had been drawn by the excitement like so many. My employer and her other cousin Mary Marchmont began to search the park. It should have been dark, but the clouds were so lit up they could see perfectly. Within a few minutes they found Nanny Fellows sitting dazed against a tree.”

“Injured? Faint? Confused?” Mr. Jones asked.

“Nanny said that the dog slipped his collar and ran off, and that she had last seen John, the footman, and Andrew chasing the dog. She tried to keep up, but stumbled and fell and lost sight of them.”

“How long a time passed between her losing them and your finding her?” He watched her closely, that gaze steady and keen, the pronoun, a deliberate provocation.

Phoebe ignored it. Let him think he understood things. “Perhaps half an hour.”

“Did Mrs. Fellows say the boy got milk?”

“Yes.”

“So, did the milk vendor remember him?”

Phoebe frowned. Mrs. Bell had run her milk stall for years and had certainly served Andrew milk in the past. But in the aftermath of the fire, the milk vendors had not come to the park for days, and there was nothing in Mr. Tanner’s report about Mrs. Bell. Mr. Jones’s question made her doubt Tanner’s competence or dedication. “The investigator didn’t say.”

“Do you think it likely that the boy went with this footman to see the fire? Would he leave his nanny behind?” Mr. Jones did not look at her, but remained focused on his notes.

“He would be very curious about the fire, but leaving Nanny was unlike him. Leaving the dog was unlike him.” She had argued this point in her head repeatedly. Andrew was not one to leave others behind, but he and she had often walked to the station of the Phoenix Fire Company to admire the engines. “At the time my employer believed that John Boyle had taken Andrew to see the fire.”

“Did John the footman say as much?” Mr. Jones asked.

“He never returned.”

Mr. Jones’s head came up abruptly, and he pinned her with sharp stare. “And what was done to find him?”

Phoebe took a deep breath. “My employer advertised, circulated descriptions of John, and contacted the agency from which he had been hired.”

“And?” he said.

“Nothing,” she admitted. “The agency had no such man on their records.” That had been the most troubling result of the investigation. They had been deceived in John. He had appeared to be an amiable lad, eager to perform his duties, and watchful of Andrew. He claimed to have younger nephews. Even now Phoebe could not imagine that John would harm Andrew. But if he had no part in Andrew’s disappearance, why had he vanished?

“Did this John Boyle leave anything behind in his room to indicate who his people were or where he might have gone?”

She didn’t answer at once. The question was another sign of the missteps in the first search.

“Mrs. Kendall?”

“Mr. Boyle’s room was cleared of his possessions. They were given to the rag man who comes round once a fortnight.”

His pencil stopped moving, and he muttered something under his breath that it was probably best that she didn’t hear. At last, he said, “And who is the neighborhood rag man?”

“I will find out,” she said. It was a weakness in her disguise that she didn’t know who the rag man was. Any housekeeper would. It was the practice to offer such men worn clothes and bits of household goods no longer needed.

Mr. Jones put down his pencil and tipped a handful of pins from a plain brown mug on the desk into his broad palm. “Show me the path the boy took from the house to the park.” He stood, pushed his chair in under the desk, and slapped the map on the wall.

“Very well.” Phoebe rose and squeezed past him, her black skirts filling the narrow space between the desks. He stood as much to one side as possible, still the stiff fabric of her skirts brushed against him. In the small space he was unavoidable. Tall and solid and male. He was supposed to work for her, but he assumed control. She faced the map. With every question he asked, the flaws in the first search became more apparent and it seemed foolish to begin again even with the note and the coin.

She pointed to Marchmont House. “Andrew, Nanny, and John Boyle started here, on Charles Street,” she said. Mr. Jones reached over her shoulder and pushed a pin into the wall. She drew her finger along to Waterloo Place and down to the steps below the Duke of York’s column and into the park.

“And where did you… did your employer find the nanny?”

Phoebe pointed to a spot near one of the milk stands just beyond the park entrance. Mr. Jones added a pin to the map.

“I take it the dog’s collar and lead were recovered?” he asked.

“The first investigator found them two days later.”

“Where?”

“Under some bushes.” Phoebe pointed to a spot on the path around Duck Island, and Mr. Jones stuck a pin there. it seemed so small a thing, a dot on the vast map to mark where her brother had last been within her reach, only a short walk from home, in a park he knew well.

From that last pin to where Birdcage Walk met Great George Street was a distance of mere yards, and from there to where the fire raged not far at all. That evening they heard the great roar of it and felt its heat and ashy breath in the air. It had been necessary to close all the windows in the house when Phoebe and her cousin Mary returned with Nanny Fellows. Near one in the morning cousin Henry brought the news that he had been unable to find either Andrew or John Boyle.

Henry described the mob, the confusion of the scene, and the terrible destruction against which the fire crews battled until a shift in wind and tide had allowed them to quench the flames. He advised Phoebe to be hopeful and to wait for morning. Surely, John and Andrew had been caught up in the excitement and unable to make their way through the crowds.

But morning failed to bring Andrew home. A thousand times since then, Phoebe had imagined Andrew and John leaving the park, heading for the fire, joining the crowds. For hours they had likely been absorbed by the spectacle, the roaring flames and tolling bells, the glass shattering and timbers cracking, the firemen scrambling on the roof, and the clanging of the engine pumps. And then what? Once the excitement faded, Andrew would have been exhausted. Still, a few turns along familiar streets should have brought them home. Once on holiday in Worthing, she had watched her father take her brother out from the shore in a skiff and tried to keep her eye firmly fixed on the small boat as it rose and fell in the waves. Time after time she’d lost that speck among the glittering peaks of waves until it reappeared at last coming toward her.

Mr. Jones stood at her back, judging the failed search efforts, she supposed. “There was no other sighting?” he asked.

Phoebe shook her head.

“You may sit again, Mrs. Kendall,” he said. When she did, he returned to his own chair, and held his pencil between the tips of his forefingers, looking at it, not her.

“I need to question the members of your household about John Boyle. The sooner, the better.”

“You can’t. You can’t interview them,” she said firmly. “The search must remain secret.”

“Then we are at a standstill. The search will go nowhere without information that was missed earlier. According to your statement, John Boyle was the last person to see the boy.” His gaze was level and uncompromising.

“I will collect staff statements for you. This evening.”

He dropped the pencil, and she started. “Mrs. Kendall, when were you married?”

“What?”

“When were you married? It’s a simple question.”

Phoebe’s cheeks burned. She was glad of the veil over her face and the black bombazine around her. Mr. Jones had an unnerving way of looking at her. She tried to think of a reasonable year. “In twenty-eight,” she said.

He rose from the desk, towering over her. She refused to be cowed by his height. She supposed that her disguise gave him license to treat her with less civility than her rank required. He was nothing like Mr. Tanner, the Bow Street Runner. Tanner had an ingratiating manner, the manner proper to a man in one’s employ. Mr. Jones was supposed to work for her. She stood to lessen the sense of his power. It didn’t help much. He was so much larger than she.

Abruptly he seized her by the waist, his big hands pinching the padding around her middle. She squirmed in his hold, but he didn’t release her. “A disguise, Mrs. Kendall, is not a false name and an overlarge gown. Wasting police time is an offense. In twenty-eight,” he said, “you were what? Thirteen? So, give over, you’re no housekeeper. Who are you?”

The office door opened, and a deep voice called out, “Well, well, Jones, interesting place for a tumble. You’ll need to clear your desk first.”

*

Robin looked up from the squirming female in his hold. Lumley’s leering, pockmarked face was just what a bad morning needed. He released Mrs. Kendall, whoever she was. For an instant she stared up at him. Then she turned and fled. The door slammed behind her.

“Oho,” cried Lumley. “Ugly and reluctant, too. You do know how to pick them, Jones.”

“Sod off, Lumley. She’s a case.”

“She is that. A dog-napping case, I’ll wager!” Lumley laughed at his own wit.

Robin headed out the door after the woman. She and the dog were halfway across the yard. A whistle brought the dog to a halt. She tugged at the lead, stymied for the moment. He loped across the yard.

“Mrs. Kendall,” he said, stopping in front of her. The dog dropped to her feet. The wind tugged at her skirts and the veil on her hat. “Ignore Lumley. He’s an idiot.”

“Lumley!” she said. “Can I ignore you, a man who put his hands on me?”

“I repeat,” he said. “Wasting police time is an offense. I can’t help you if you’re not straight with me.”

“My employer can’t be seen to seek help. The note’s warning is clear.”

“Who will know your employer seeks help?” he asked. Mrs. Kendall’s story had holes in it that he could drive an omnibus through. She wasn’t a widow, and he didn’t believe she had a mysterious ‘employer,’ but who was she then?

She looked down as if the answer to the spoken question might be written in the dust and dry grass under their feet. “We can’t be sure. All we know is that someone who wants to find Andrew is a danger to him. We can’t trust anyone, even friends who helped with the first search.” Her voice was anguished.

“You mean the botched search that led nowhere? Do you think these friends were involved in the boy’s disappearance?”

She turned her face up to him, and the wind lifted her veil. He had a brief glimpse of smooth flushed cheeks, changeable blue eyes, and a chin with a stubborn point. He wanted to dismiss it as an ordinary female face, but his eyes lingered on her mouth. “We have no evidence, but we were perhaps too trusting of Mr. Tanner. He made a great deal of the circumstances public, and now, with the note, we must act with more caution.”

“You said this to Mayne?”

She nodded. “He agreed that I might… be Mrs. Kendall… in order to keep the new search quiet.”

Robin shoved his hands in his pockets. Mayne’s taking the case made more sense. The police had no authority to investigate crime, only to be a public deterrence to it, but here was an opportunity to practice the investigative methods Mayne believed in with no public notice.

“Very well,” Robin said. “I will help, but only if you’re straight with me.”

The wind ruffled her skirts and gave her the appearance of a leaf trembling, but the face turned up to his was unshakeable. “If I leave the house as Mrs. Kendall, no one notices.”

He could see her logic. A woman in widow’s weeds drew at best a quick, sympathetic glance from others, but stirred no curiosity. “And you must leave the house?”

She nodded. “You can’t come there, looking like a policeman, and asking questions if we are to keep Andrew safe. We don’t know who means him harm.”

She had a point, but he didn’t like that we . The public had no idea of the true nature of detection. “I can’t conduct an investigation if you withhold information.”

“I’ll bring you all my notes.”

She had notes. Robin, who was not given to imploring the Almighty for aid, thought he might have to pray for patience. “You come to Mayne. You want help from the police, but you think you can do our job for us? It doesn’t work that way, Mrs. Kendall.”

“Surely,” she said. “You can make a start with what was done earlier.”

“With Tanner’s work, you mean? He’s at least half of your problem.”

“Do you know him?”

Robin nodded. Tanner was one of the old guard, a bear of a man with an intimate knowledge of thieves and receivers, and rough methods of extracting information from them. He would stand out in the neighborhood of St. James’s Square as much as the criminals he collared. Robin doubted that Tanner had learned anything from Mrs. Kendall’s neighbors on Charles Street. Robin would have to begin again.

“I know Tanner,” he said. “Your employer is right to start over. I need those notes, but don’t bring them here.” Robin didn’t want Lumley looking over his shoulder, making his jokes.

“Where then?”

“The park?”

She shook her head. “Do you know the West End Coffeehouse in Oxford Street?”

“I know it. Tomorrow then. Three.”

“If I need to send a message to you?” she asked. “How may I do so?”

“I’ll send a boy runner to your kitchen door.”

She offered her hand. “Thank you, Mr. Jones.”

“Just Jones.” Robin took the small, gloved hand in his. She was going to make his job difficult.

*

Robin went straight to Mayne’s office and didn’t bother to knock.

“Jones?” Mayne did not look up from the document in front of him. “Did you get Mrs. Kendall’s statement?”

“I did. I take it the boy is no nameless lad, and that Mrs. Kendall’s employer has a lot of pull.”

“Just so, Jones.”

“And who would that employer be, sir?” Robin dared to ask. Usually, he did not question the commissioner, but Mrs. Kendall’s concealment of her identity was irksome. He could not imagine the employer who would allow so young a female to see to police business.

“Mrs. Kendall is employed by the Earl of Grafton.”

The name meant nothing to Robin. If she wasn’t a housekeeper, and Robin felt sure on that point, who was she? And who was the missing boy?

“Sir, with all due respect, that girl is no housekeeper.”

Mayne was silent, and Robin braced for a sharp rebuke. He’d gone too far.

At last Mayne looked up. “To you she is Mrs. Kendall, a source. The boy has been missing for a year and appears to be alive. That’s what matters. Find the missing boy without calling attention to the case—no newspaper articles, no public notice, no servant gossip—and you win friends for our detective service. Do I make myself clear?”

“Very good, sir.” Robin turned to leave.

“And, Jones, the boy is Andrew James Marchmont, Fifth Earl of Grafton. If you want a spot on the new force, you will find him.”