Charles bows, and after a moment’s hesitation shakes his hand. “Do you recall the episode Sam mentioned?”
The man sits down heavily at the booth, then looks up again at Charles. “It must have been that young woman, sir. I don’t think I’ve thought of her from that day to this. But it must be her.”
“What young woman?” says Charles ungently, “What was her name?”
Finch shrugs. “That I never knew. They buried her as Smith, though I don’t know if it was her real name. Not likely, I should say. Not much more than twenty, that I do remember. And of good family, they said, though I never saw the corpse myself. Should have been our case—all the lads said so—but the guv’nor told us Mr Maddox had it all in hand, and had requested discretion. Words of that kind.”
Charles and Sam exchange a glance.
“And how did she die?” asks Charles quietly.
“She drowned, sir. They found her body one winter morning, floating in the Serpentine.”
“Don’t you see?” says Charles excitedly as the two men walk back up the Waterloo Road ten minutes later. “It
has
to be Harriet Shelley. The right date, the right age, and she
drowned,
Sam. Don’t you remember what Maddox said—‘no poison administered, no blow struck, no weapon wielded’—of all the deaths Harriet could have died, only drowning matches the murder Maddox talked of.”
“Sorry, Chas.” Sam shakes his head. “I just ain’t buyin’ it. I just don’t fink a gent like Shelley coulda killed ’is wife and got away wiv it. It just ain’t plausible.”
“Come on, Sam! You know as well as I do he could have made it look like suicide.”
Sam extracts an apple from his pocket and takes a bite. “And yer really fink yer uncle wouldn’ta noticed?” he retorts, spitting juice down his jacket. “Of all the Runners and takers in London, ’e’d have known the signs. There wouldn’t ’ave been no pulling the wool over
’is
eyes.”
Charles purses his mouth and looks away.
“And yer can’t even be sure it really was ’er. Not absolutely.”
“Then who the hell else was it?” snaps Charles. “My uncle had no other case at that time—nothing that explains how he came to have the death of a young woman on his hands, and doing everything in his power to cover it up.”
But Sam’s shaking his head again. “It weren’t coverin’ up if it were suicide. Just a way of keepin’ it outta the papers—and that’d also explain why ’er name was changed. You can see why someone’d ask ’im to do that. ’E’d done that sorta fing for clients before.”
Charles nods slowly. “So he had, Sam. But there’s one fact that doesn’t explain. Why in God’s name was
William Godwin
involved? He and his family were the Westbrooks’ sworn enemies. Why should he lift a finger to help them? Or spend money protecting a woman his own daughter had supplanted long before?”
But to those questions, Sam has no answers.
• • •
Carlo Cottage seems destitute of all life when Charles strides up the steps later that afternoon and slides his key into the lock. There are the remains of a fire in the drawing-room, but the embers are dying inwards into ashen ghosts and there is no sign of the maid coming to replenish the coals. Charles hesitates in the hallway, wondering whether this might not be an ideal opportunity to replace what he has taken. He was going to wait till nightfall, but then the other occupants of the house will be present, even if sleeping, and now it seems there may be no-one about to hear. Decisive, once the decision is made, he goes quickly upstairs to collect the papers, then comes back down and strides across the room to the piano-stool, where he removes the drapery, and lumbers the trunk round so that he can slide the papers back inside. Which is when he hears the minutest of tiny sounds behind him, and raises his eyes to see—
Claire.
“And what do you think you are doing?”
“I—I—” Charles stammers, his face ablaze.
She comes towards him, in that rustle of silk, that breath of dark scent.
“Shall I,” she says, taking a seat opposite him and arranging her skirts serenely about her, “save you the embarrassment of concocting a story that you and I both know will be nothing but lies from start to finish?”
He looks in her eyes—those eyes so black, so brilliant—and cannot read what he sees there. Fury? Compassion? Even perhaps, and strangest of all, satisfaction? And then he hangs his head and turns away.
“Well,” she says, and now that he cannot see her face she permits full rein to the smile she has been doing her best to repress. “If you are not prepared to speak, it seems the task must fall to me. It is only a theory, of course, but I think that what I just interrupted was an attempt on your part to return some papers of mine to where you found them. I think, moreover, that you have made notes about those papers, so that you might report back what you have discovered to your master. Or”—and here she raises an eyebrow—“perhaps
mistress
would be a more appropriate word? Tell me, how long is it that you have been in the pay of the odious Lady Shelley?”
Odious
is not a word he would have expected from one woman about another, however unconventional the speaker, and his reaction is evident in his face.
“Oh, you no doubt think my language excessive. You would not, had you suffered at her hands as I have done, all these years.” And then, seeing his expression change, “But perhaps they have told you
I
am the one who persecutes
them
?”
She laughs then. “Well you must make up your own mind whom to believe. But is not your very presence here the strongest possible evidence against them?
I,
after all, have not installed an informer within the hallowed portals of Chester Square.”
He’s looking at her now—staring, in what would otherwise be the most discourteous manner from a gentleman to a lady. But then again, Claire is like no lady Charles has ever met, and he can hardly call himself a gentleman. Not now that she has discovered what he’s been doing.
“But how—”
She laughs again. “Do you really think I did not guess why you were here? My dear Mr—
Mab,
is it still? I recognised you the moment I saw you. You had been skulking across the street from here for more than an hour in the rain not two days earlier. I grant you were moderately successful in concealing yourself, but anyone who has lived the life I have lived, and kept the secrets I have kept, becomes more than usually alert to such insistent observation. I confess I was momentarily dismayed to have found your delightful ‘sister’ to be nothing but a fraud, but it has so often been my fate to find those on whom I bestow my affections to be totally unworthy of them, it scarcely distresses me any more.”
Her voice has taken on that petulant tone Charles has heard in it before, but he is hardly in a position to refute her.
“And besides,” she continues, the amusement returning as quickly as it had gone, “if
I
had pried into
your
things as
you
have pried into
mine,
I should have discovered that your supposed portfolio of artworks is nothing but a mismatched muddle, clearly executed by a whole host of different—and indeed
in
different—hands. Whatever you are, you are certainly no painter, Mr
Maddox.
”
And now she really does have him. He gapes, utterly confounded—even if he’s been stupid enough to give the game away, there’s nothing, surely, that can have given his
name
away. How on earth—?
She is watching him with that mysterious smile, her head slightly tilted, a lock of hair twisting around one finger.
“You resemble him, you know,” she says softly, after a moment. “Very much. He was such a handsome man.”
“Who?” His voice is barely more than a whisper.
“Your namesake. The first Charles Maddox. Your—it must be grand-father, I think?”
Charles shakes his head, blizzarded by this stupefying turn of events, “Great-uncle. He never married.”
Claire sighs. “What a terrible waste. Heavens, it must be more than thirty years ago now that we met,” she says, then stops and looks at him, her face suddenly still. “But of course you know that. No doubt you have spoken to him, and heard every last detail from his own lips.”
She drops her gaze now, but not before Charles has seen fear flicker across her eyes—it’s so fleeting he scarcely registers it at a conscious level, but it is enough. Call it intuition, or interrogator’s instinct, but when he opens his mouth to answer, what he tells her is a lie. “My uncle is not well enough to talk of the past, Miss Clairmont, but, yes, I have read his files. I know what happened.”
And now, he is certain. Her body betrays her disquiet in signs so slight as to be almost imperceptible—the tiniest tension in her fingers, the momentary quiver about her mouth—but Charles, if anyone, can read the mind’s construction in the frame. Something took place, all those years ago, that Maddox witnessed, and she does not want known. Something far more dangerous than mere scandal, since this is a woman who has spent her life flouting social convention, without a care for the consequences. Whatever it was, it made Maddox privy to a secret she believes Charles, too, has now discovered. And it is a secret that gives him power over her. Or would do, if only Charles knew what it was—knew what was in those missing pages he’s claiming to have read. And that will be doubly difficult to discover now, without revealing his pretence, and ceding his advantage. They are silent for a moment. She breathing a little fast, a little shallow; he conscious only of his own quandary. Because this is not the first time Charles has been rather too clever for his own good, and it won’t be the last either.
“And so,” she says at last, lifting her eyes to meet his. “
I
have exposed
you,
only to be exposed myself, in my turn. I am not wholly surprised. You seem to take after your great-uncle in more than your mere appearance.” She pauses. “Your move, Mr Maddox.”
And as he gazes at her now he sees a challenge in those beautiful eyes. A look far too direct and forthright for a Victorian lady, and proof once more—if proof were necessary—how little such common proprieties mean to this woman, and how far the long journey of her life has taken her from the mass of her contemporaries. Charles, too, aspires to the unconventional—would like to think himself as disdainful as she is of what others think, and what others expect, and it is this that decides him now, even though it will make him doubly deceitful—both to her and to the Shelleys—and there will be no possibility of retraction, once the offer has been made.
“I propose that we might be of use to one another, Miss Clairmont. There are things I want to know, which I cannot ask my uncle in his present state of health, but which I believe you can tell me. And by way of exchange—”
“By way of exchange?” she mocks.
“By way of exchange, I will endeavour to help you in this current—matter.”
She studies him a moment and then smiles. “A deal with the devil. And never was Beelzebub more beguiling. Very well, Mr Maddox, I will agree. Though on one condition. Like the
djinn
in Scheherazade’s tale, I will give you what you seek, but thrice only. You may ask me three questions, and I will give you your answers. But that is all. There must be some limit, even to the truth. What say you—is that not fair?”
Charles hesitates, wondering uneasily if he has not played into her hands, and given her—all unwitting—the better of the bargain. But it is too late now. He nods. “That is fair.”
“And you in your turn will take up my cause? Act as my champion?”
He smiles dryly. “Within reason, Miss Clairmont. There must be some limit, even to knight-errantry.”
She raises an arched brow. “
Touché,
Mr Maddox.”
Claire rises now and goes to ring the bell, then returns to her seat with a shiver, gathering about her the same worn old shawl he saw her wear before. Charles gets to his feet and does what he can to build up the fire.
“Since we have so much to discuss,” she says, as the maid appears in the doorway and is dispatched to the kitchen for coffee, “I think we might both benefit from a little refreshment.” She arranges her skirts once more. “So, what is it that you wish to ask me?”
As he was raking the fire he was racking his mind. Three questions, three answers. Three opportunities, and three alone, to obtain the information he wants. But how is he to extract the facts, without betraying the real extent of his ignorance?
He takes a seat on the sopha opposite her and pulls his notebook from his pocket. There is nowhere to go now but forwards. “There is a reference, in those papers of yours I read, to my great-uncle.”
She looks at him for a moment, clearly a little perplexed, but then her face clears.
“Oh, you mean that horrible man
Maddocks
? That was someone else entirely. We rented a house from him in Marlow in 1817, and left various things in his charge. After we left for Italy the loathsome little man sold some of them, and attempted to hold us to ransom for the rest.”
“I see,” says Charles, wondering if his most promising theory has just shattered in pieces. “So the name was merely a strange coincidence?”
Claire sighs. “The coincidence is stranger even than that—Shelley had already encountered a man named Maddocks once before, when he was living in Wales, at a place called Tremadoc. Such odd recurrences of names happened to him so often that I think he genuinely came to believe there was some purpose in it—some larger design. That he could somehow contrive to change the past by repeating it. Or if not alter it, redeem it.”
Charles frowns. “I am not sure I understand you.”
“It is not easy to explain—not to someone who never knew him.” Claire takes a deep breath. “When he was seventeen Shelley fell in love with one of his cousins. A beautiful girl, by all accounts, called Harriet Grove. He wanted to marry her, but her family put a stop to it—apparently they discovered some letters he had written to her which they considered alarming. I do know he was wretchedly miserable for a while, and when he met Harriet Westbrook some part of him must have thought her name was a sign that he could reclaim his first love—or exorcise it. I believe he married her in that hope, but it brought nothing but calamity on them both. And it was the same when he met Mary. Harriet once claimed that the only hold Mary ever had over Shelley was her name. It was such an odd thing to say I have never forgotten it.”