The Thief-Taker moabsr-1 Page 9

  Chapter 12

  As the midmorning sitting at Police Court would be under way by now, Morton decided he could hazard a brief visit to Bow Street without much risk of encountering Sir Nathaniel. He found George Vaughan lounging in the front chamber, a small ruffian with a bleeding nose slumped disconsolately beside him-doubtless awaiting their interview with the Magistrates. Morton threw himself down on the bench across from Vaughan, stretching out his legs and crossing them.

  “This cull looks ready for a hearty choke-and-caper sauce,” he remarked, and smiled cheerfully at Vaughan's prisoner. It was an underworld witticism for hanging, and Vaughan chuckled, his lean, hard features relaxing a little.

  “Jack Ketch'll have him for breakfast, sure,” he agreed. “He's hardly a mouthful, though. Likely get stuck between his teeth.” And they laughed together at the other man's obvious discomfiture. Even so, Morton sensed a particular wariness in his colleague. Did Vaughan know that Morton's knowledge of his doings had recently been augmented by Jimmy Presley?

  Even at the best he and Vaughan had never been in sympathy, and this little exchange of rough police humour almost suggested that both were trying, for some reason, to pretend otherwise.

  Vaughan continued the bantering mood.

  “So, what's this particular Bow Street Runner chasing today?”

  “In fact, I've been thrown a scrap of work regarding this swell, Glendinning.”

  “Oh, aye?” Vaughan's studied casualness was understandable now, of course. Was Morton trying to find out about the bribe that must have been paid to Presley and Vaughan to avoid prosecution? But Morton had no interest in that, and he wanted Vaughan to see it directly.

  “Just as to what set him off. A modest gent, by all reports, faint-hearted even, some might say. But here he is trying to get his brains blown out by a man like Rokeby, then drinking himself into an early grave in some bordello. I've been asked to see if I can find out why.”

  The other Runner gave a brief laugh.

  “The answer to your question is simple, Mr. Morton. The man was an ass. Though I don't suppose your people paid you to learn that.”

  “No, I don't suppose they did. You and Mr. Presley were at this little dance. What was that quarrel about, after all?”

  George Vaughan shrugged. “You know our Colonel Rokeby. He's an unfortunate tendency with his jaw, hasn't he?”

  “He has indeed. But I don't think I'd be for getting myself killed over a few words.”

  “You'd need to be a gent to understand,” George Vaughan drawled. “And, Mr. Morton, nor you nor I is such a thing, it seems.”

  Morton straightened the seam on his perfectly tailored breeches. “So it would appear, Mr. Vaughan. So it would appear. But this man Glendinning,” he went on, “was he up to the task, do you think? Would he have done for our man Rokeby if he'd had the chance?”

  Vaughan scoffed. “He looked ready to swoon when we arrived. Had the vapours, he did. No, the Colonel was the horse to bet on.”

  “I wonder why Rokeby bothered at all with such a little fop? Why not just sneer him back to his lady-friend? It's not as if the world would start calling a man like Colonel Fitzwilliam Rokeby of the First Guards timid.”

  Now Vaughan smiled at him a moment without answering.

  “Well, Mr. Morton, I suppose there be men as don't much care whom they shoot, or why. But I see the way of your thinking. Best ask the good Colonel yourself, I'd say. Best ask him straight out: Did he pour a hogshead of brandy down this cully's throat, to finish up what Mr. Presley and I so inconsiderately interrupted?”

  Morton smiled back.

  “I will ask him just that.”

  Presley would probably be a better source. But Presley was not about, so Morton decided to pay a visit to the Guards Club. He was getting little of value with his vague enquiries. Perhaps, even as Vaughan said, it was time to do the obvious.

  The Club stood austerely behind a row of white Doric columns set back from Upper Grosvenor Street. Morton, of course, got no farther than the porter in the front vestibule, and indeed, had it broadly hinted to him that he ought by rights to have made his appearance at the back with the other trades. But he was properly dressed, behaved with pointed self-respect, and loudly mentioned the words “police” and “Bow Street,” and was thus shown into a small, dark waiting-room for nonmembers. There was, he suspected, an airier and better furnished one for nonmembers of blue blood. But this would have to do. The porter allowed as how he would enquire into Colonel Rokeby's availability.

  The irony of it, Morton reflected, as he looked over the rather poor daub that hung on the papered wall- apparently a representation of the Foot Guards at Talavera in '09-was that Rokeby's birth was probably as low as, or lower than, his own. The Colonel's commission, if he ever really held one, was unlikely still to be active. He had probably won it gambling. Could one do that? If anyone ever had, it would have been Rokeby. Well, if he had not won the commission outright, he doubtless won the means to purchase it, fit himself out in a splendid uniform, then promptly sell up. What Rokeby had really done was master the ability to look his part, and to lie with the most polished effrontery of any man in Europe. That, and kill with a dueling pistol, which had the tendency to discourage contradiction.

  Many weary minutes later the porter sidled in to say that Colonel Rokeby was not, as it happened, available to be seen. Before he could start to show Morton the door, however, the Runner asked for Captain Pierce instead. The porter looked irritated, but went off again.

  Morton expected an even longer wait, but within a remarkably short interval the door opened again and Pierce himself sauntered in, alone.

  “Good day, Constable, good day!” the little man cheerfully greeted him, one hand extended, the other dangling a cigar. “It's been many a month, has it not?”

  Morton returned the proffered salutation with concealed distaste. If there ever was a definition of the unkind moniker “toady,” it surely began and ended in the person of “Captain” Archibald Pierce. Rokeby's diminutive follower must have had even fewer military credentials than his master, and displayed in addition the most irritatingly ingratiating manner of any man Morton had ever known. Why on earth did the real military men who presumably ruled this Club not rebel and throw the two of them bodily out their door? It was one of the mysteries of the Regent's London, though, this unpredictable permeability of the most supposedly “exclusive” barriers. Why, for instance, had the fashionable world from the Prince down allowed themselves to be dominated by such a miserable and low-born specimen of the human animal as the dandy “Beau” Brummell?

  Part of Pierce's talent, of course, was his bonhomie and his shameless willingness to flatter. He quite neatly complemented the inveterately insulting Rokeby: Once the pair of them had what they wanted of you, either you allowed the Captain to smooth you over with his honeyed tongue, or you objected and the Colonel shot you dead.

  “How can I assist His Majesty's most loyal officer of police today?” Pierce glibly enquired. Such absurdities flowed so naturally off the man's tongue that they almost sounded reasonable. Morton told him he wanted to speak to Rokeby.

  “Not here, my friend. Not today. Tomorrow perhaps, but then, maybe I can help you instead. You know with how much of his confidence the Colonel honours me. What might it be about?”

  “I'm wondering what passed between the Colonel and Mr. Halbert Glendinning, that it should have come to an affair of honour.”

  “Ah, ah,” said Pierce wisely, “unfortunate business, that.” He drew deeply on his cigar, and luxuriously emitted smoke. “Most unnecessary, really. Puzzling, in fact.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, Constable, the Colonel had not felt himself offended by young Mr. Glendinning. Not in the least. Indeed, he hardly knew the man.”

  “But words passed between them.”

  “Not to the Colonel's recollection. That's what was rather surprising about the thing.”

  “Come, come, Pierce.
There was a dinner, here, at this Club, and Mr. Glendinning went away from it so deeply angered as to be ready to wager his life.”

  Pierce stood a moment, cannily eyeing Morton, and smiling imperturbably.

  “Not a bit of it, Constable,” he finally said. “Not as either the Colonel or I recollect it. Now, as you well know, the Colonel's conception of honour is such that when a challenge arrives, be it from whomsoever, he is your man. Pistols for two, coffee for one. Unless of course,” and Pierce lightly laughed, “you fellows get wind of it. Granted, of course, that it's formally illegal, but where honour and law collide…” He made a delicately helpless gesture.

  “You are telling me that Glendinning issued the challenge and you did nothing to find out why?”

  “Not at all. The entire matter was so mysterious that the Colonel dispatched me to make a little bit of an enquiry with this young gentleman's second. Not to cry off, of course, nothing near. But just to know a bit better what the matter was.”

  “Mr. Peter Hamilton?”

  “Yes, that was the gentleman.”

  “And you went? What came of it?”

  Pierce's voice lowered, in pretentious solemnity. “I received from that interview the mention of a lady's name. When I mentioned this name to the Colonel, he seemed to know it, and to understand somewhat better the nature of the offence. Even so, he said to me, ‘Pierce, I don't mind telling you’-these were his words-‘that the thing is hardly a killing matter, for all that.’ He evinced a certain… disrespect for the quality of the understanding of the two gentlemen who opposed us.”

  “But he was prepared to kill Glendinning anyway.”

  “Now, Constable, as I'm sure you're aware, there was no duel at all, when it came to the point. The young gentleman's subsequent and unhappy end can hardly be laid at our door. He seems to have been a fellow of low habits and acquaintance.”

  “Now, how do you know that, Captain Pierce?” wondered Morton.

  “Ah, but there are many ears in London-town. Many ears, and many tongues.”

  The Runner considered this answer a moment. There had been a good number of people at Portman House that night, and Lord Arthur's servants seemed to lack discretion, considering that Vaughan, too, had quickly found out what went on. Unless Glendinning's dissipations were both real and well known.

  “Tell the Colonel I still want to talk to him. I'll be here tomorrow, at the same time.”

  “I've no knowledge of the Colonel's engagements this week,” smoothly replied Pierce, “or even whether I will have the pleasure of seeing him myself this evening.”

  “Tomorrow,” repeated Morton, and went out.

  Chapter 13

  Arabella Malibrant and Henry Morton sat again in the second-floor drawing-room of her tidy little house at number 7 Theobald's Road. It was a place Morton had sometimes wondered about. Was it left to her when her husband fled under a financial cloud back to his native Italy, or had she bought it of her own earnings? It was doubtful that even the most celebrated actress would be quite so well rewarded, at least for her work onstage. That some “patron” was behind it-or several-was an unavoidable possibility.

  Such thoughts always caused a little burn of dyspeptic resentment in the heart of Henry Morton. This was usually followed by a sinking feeling. With application, and a little luck, he might yet earn enough to safely call himself a gentleman. But he had to admit that no number of lucrative commissions would ever enable a mere Bow Street Runner to provide a woman a house like this.

  But it was a pleasant place, and he enjoyed being there. Arabella had decorated with a somewhat more flamboyant hand than Morton himself would have wielded-like many women with hair of the same colour, she was rather too fond of red. The Turkey carpet was good, the shiny pink cushions… well, perhaps. But the heavy crimson window-drapes were too much. Not that she ever asked his advice.

  Indeed, it was more Mrs. Malibrant's way to offer advice than receive it.

  “I hear doubts, Henry Morton,” Arabella said, patting her lips with a fine linen napkin.

  They were drinking smuggled French wine and eating fresh oysters on the half-shell.

  “It is part and parcel of what I do-doubt everything and everyone.”

  “Except me, of course.”

  Morton smiled as he speared an oyster with his fork. He was sure he felt it wriggle as he swallowed, and reached quickly for his wineglass. “If Rokeby wanted to do away with Glendinning he would merely have issued a challenge himself, on some pretext or other. What you suggest seems too elaborate and too subtle for our Colonel. And then to lure Glendinning off somewhere and poison him…? Aside from the fact that it isn't his style, he must surely have realised we would suspect him.”

  “But, Henry, had I not been at Portman House and been alerted by the jarvey, the doctor who saw him would have had the final word: died of excessive drink and choking on his own bile. It seems a crime with little risk, to me. Rokeby could hardly have predicted that a woman of my observational abilities would be on the stair.”

  Morton smiled. Arabella could not be flattered enough. “You are a marvel,” he murmured dutifully, pursuing another slippery morsel about its shell.

  Arabella's rich throaty laugh filled the room. Perhaps it was the wine, or perhaps it was something else, but Morton could not help noticing that he was in rather better favour this night than he had been on the previous two.

  “You might at least try to sound sincere, you dog!” she scolded. “And grateful. I sent Miss Hamilton your way. Where are my thanks for that?”

  “I have just made a small remittance,” Morton replied, “with more to follow.”

  “Oh, I see. Your favours have worth, but what of mine?”

  “They are beyond price.”

  Arabella smiled, fixing a bemused gaze on him. “It is lucky that you are a handsome rogue, Henry Morton, for otherwise I should never have taken up with anyone so common as a Bow Street Runner.”

  Morton laughed. Their eyes met over the raised rims of their wineglasses, and Arabella's were dancing with amusement and affection. Yes, it did seem tonight was going to end more pleasantly.

  Arabella's face turned suddenly serious. “She is an odd woman,” she said.

  “Miss Hamilton?”

  Arabella nodded distractedly. “Arthur said he thought her a person whom tragedy would visit again and again.”

  “Yes,” Morton said, surprised by the rightness of this. “I had that sense. As though she is aware of it herself and only struggles on. She is so joyless. I thought it merely the recent events, but perhaps it is more.”

  Arabella looked up at him. “Now, Henry, don't you go to rescuing her. You know where that leads….”

  Morton grimaced and sipped his wine.

  “Find out what you can of Glendinning's death, and then leave well enough alone.”

  Morton nodded, only half listening. “Do you think she was wrong about him?-Glendinning? Was he dissolute? You know how well these London men hide such things from polite society. And from their families.”

  She held out her glass and Morton poured more wine. “Yes, I suppose it's quite possible. One of the several things you shall have to find out. Who was Halbert Glendinning… and why did Louisa call him Richard?”

  “Do you remember that verse I found in his pocket?”

  Arabella shook her head. “It was not memorable.”

  Morton went to his coat and dug out the scrap of paper. Returning to his chair, he read:

  “ ‘It will find you soon enough,

  The empty night after the day.

  Brief and filled with sorrow,

  Love will rise and slip away.’”

  “‘It’?” Arabella said.

  “Death, one might infer: ‘The empty night after the day.’ Does it not sound like a love affair gone bad?”

  Arabella took the paper from his hand and pondered it a moment. “It is most certainly about the loss of love. ‘The empty night’ alludes to that as well
.” She looked up at Morton. “I wonder if Arthur was wrong. He thought them about to announce their engagement. But what if the opposite was true?” She glanced at the verse again. “Did Louisa know how Glendinning felt?”

  Morton shook his head. “I wonder. It is terribly despairing, isn't it? And think of what then occurred: He challenged the most feared duelist in London. It does look a bit suspicious, especially when you consider that Glendinning apparently had no skill with a pistol.”

  Arabella put her glass down and gazed gravely at Morton. “Self-murder. That's what you're suggesting?”

  Morton shrugged. “I don't know. But what if his love affair with Miss Hamilton had come to an end, or he felt it was about to?”

  “But why was he in the Otter?”

  “When dying to defend her honour failed-and remember he is of a romantic disposition-perhaps he'd learned he could procure poison at the Otter. Or meet someone there who could procure it for him.”

  “Miss Hamilton is not paying you to learn this.”

  Morton nodded. He left his chair and went to the open window where the slight breeze touched him. The street was very quiet. He felt a tension in the city, now, with Bonaparte returned to the continent. All of England seemed to be holding its breath. He thought of Wellington, and had a sudden image of the Duke bent over a map by lamplight. What a terrible weight of responsibility on one man's shoulders.

  Arabella came and stood beside him.

  “I have need of some assistance in this matter, I now see,” Morton said.

  “Hmm.”

  “There are a few people in proper society who might be more forthcoming if they were approached by someone with more subtlety than I could ever manage. Someone they greatly esteem and have no doubt long wished to meet.”

  “Such a person would be difficult to find. And what would such a helper's share of the four hundred pounds be, I wonder?”

  “Madam!” Morton said. “The sort of person with access to the circles I speak of cares nothing for gain.”

  A voice cried out in the darkened distance and they both leaned out, listening intently, but it was only a domestic dispute, not someone shouting news from France. A familiar male uneasiness stirred in Morton, as it had so many times before. Should he not be there, with the others? Facing what had to be faced? Yet here he lingered. Fine wine, fine food, a beautiful mistress. Comfort. Safety.