Death of a Fop (Bow Street Consultant series Book 1) (5 page)

“He’s quite right though, ma’am; I’m not really the sort of fellow a fine lady like yourself should be hobnobbing with” said Caleb “I got some respectability in the army, rose to sergeant; but I was born in a rookery; that’s the worst slums in London, ma’am” he explained as she looked puzzled. “A warren of dirty narrer streets; the sun don’t even shine into a lot of them they’re that narrer; and the army or navy the only way to escape; maybe free or four famblies – three or four families I should say – living in a room. There’s never no complete quiet nowhere; skeered me bad at first how much space I had, how quiet it could be at night in the barracks, only the tramp of the guard to be heard, and the odd challenge; a bed to meself; cor, I thought I was in heaven! Then I got took on by my officer, Sir Henry Wilton; a fine gentleman, what trained me as his batman and learned me to talk proper, when I think about it. He got me the job in Bow Street; he never believed I wouldn’t walk again. ‘Caleb,’ he said, ‘you’ve as stubborn as an ox with….’ Well, he praised my courage, after the coarse fashion gentlemen may, Ma’am, and I couldn’t let him down. So here I am; and not a fit subject to be sitting in a lady’s parlour so familiar-like.”

“Mr Armitage; I think you have done extremely well” said Jane “And this is the age of the self-made man. Why in Highbury – the village in Surrey where I spent much of my youth – there is a family who have risen from relatively humble origins as shopkeepers, who are quite accepted by all the local notables, even by Mrs Emma Knightley, who is something of a stickler” her eyes widened. “I will write to Emma; she has been a good friend and shown every kindness to me; perhaps she will be able to come and lend her support to me for a week or so, though I hardly like to ask it, for her father is ailing and too she is in an interesting condition. But I shall write; I am sure Emma will know exactly what to do and” she laughed ruefully “Will write me many pages of crossed and re-crossed lines of advice, for Emma likes nothing better than to give advice.”

“She sounds a most excellent friend” opined Caleb “Assuming the advice is sound and not merely written for liking the sound of her own thoughts.”

“She is; and took with rare good humour the fact that my husband – we had engaged upon a secret betrothal since his aunt was in opposition to him marrying at all – that he engaged upon a flirtation with her to allay the suspicion of others” said Jane, flushing slightly at the remembered humiliation, and secretly wondering whether Frank might have abandoned her for Emma and her fortune had Emma shown any real sign of reciprocating his apparent partiality. “And though her advice has been ill advised in the past, her maturity and her marriage have brought to a genuine good will a lot more wisdom to think through such advice as she might dispense” she added.

“Ah, that will be the lady whose husband had cause to dislike your husband” nodded Caleb. “Especially perhaps if he is a peevy cove who might see that Mr Churchill was loose in the haft as you might say.”

“You expressions are sometimes difficult to follow but quite picturesque” said Jane.

“Well that’s cant for you Ma’am; meant to confuse the swell coves,” said Caleb, “and handy for an officer of the law to be familiar with, because one of our dooties is listening to loose talk in low dives to pick up clues. And if that was all there was to finding out who has killed Mr Churchill then the task would be easy; but it’s hard to see how to proceed, Ma’am; not that I should be talking to you at all about it.”

“I am glad that you do” said Jane “I – I should like to help as much as I may; you have surmised that perhaps our marriage was not particularly
strong
but I should like nonetheless to know who has killed my husband.”

“Ah, well, if I was a relative of yourn, ma’am, I’d be wanting to shake his hand when we finds him” said Caleb “Not having so far a very high opinion of Mr Frank Churchill”

“Alas” said Jane “I fear he does not appear in a good light throughout this business. I would urge you though to consider that his actions have been governed by a weakness of character rather than any inherent wicked intent. And I thank you for shielding me by shielding his character at Chorleigh, Wright and Jekyll’s.”

“Not sure what came over me,” admitted Caleb, “but that Mr Chorleigh put my back up.”

“Where does one proceed from here?” asked Jane, glad that she was not the only one to find Mr Chorleigh’s manner offensive.

“Well strictly speaking, I should wait and see what information Mr Chorleigh might have to give me concerning any wills that turn up missing say; but I have to say, I’m wondering if that was Frankie’s lay – beg pardon ma’am, Mr Churchill’s lay – at all.”

“Never mind my feelings over what it is customary to call a, er, shady character” said Jane. “Lay is business?”

“Yes ma’am; usually of the less salubrious kind and rather smoky” said Caleb. “Mr Despard, whose word I have no cause to doubt, spoke of him bringing his
own
parchment and making out documents that did not seem to be copying; one phrase was about an hundred of something. Now it may be that your husband has been misusing seals and purporting to be a solicitor to make out documents – say writs to serve on the unwary for a supposed offence that no true solicitor would touch, not really quite blackmail but something close; say serving a writ to someone who has spat on the highway, pretending to be an officer of the law and demanding a so-called fine. Provincials in the city are easily fooled, ma’am.”

Jane flushed.

“Mr Armitage, I am a provincial; and if anyone declared that they were an officer of the law and that I had broken some by-law I should be ashamed and shocked and pay any fine asked without thinking to check” she said. “Only in my own home would I think to ask to see an occurrence book.”

“Ah, well, there you be” said Caleb “It’s the honest folk these peep-o-day types target, see. And Mr Churchill might or might not have known how serious a business he was getting into.”

“But would that be enough to pay off so great a debt?” wondered Jane.

“Well ma’am look at it this way” said Caleb “If he forged a warrant to declare a man was an officer of the law for at least two supposed officers, seems to me each of those crooks could manage to touch at least three visitors to the city - and some residents at that – for three guineas each, a good sum but not enough to make most visitors grumble
too
much, for they’d pick those as looked prosperous enough, and they do that every day of the main part of the season; that’s about a hundred days. That’s near a thousand guineas for each so-called officer; and they can do the same thing year after year, because different people come up every year. And if you arst me, it would be more like ten or a dozen every day; more’n enough to make the outlay worth it. See that sort of enterprise would be run by a nib cove, a top man. A thiefmaster. Only I’m afeared your late husband might have been involved in worse.”

“Dear G-d, there’s a potential worse?” said Jane, faintly “Mr Armitage you had better tell me the worst my husband may have been up to.”

“Well, Ma’am, there’s fraud on a large scale, see” said Caleb “The forging of documents for all sorts of schemes and scams. F’example; s’pose someone hires a fine town house like this. To rent, I’d suppose a place like this, and in such a location, would cost a thousand pounds for a year; or an hundred pounds a month; I know to a fairly close guess what most places in London are worth, see; that’s part of my business. Now, supposing that the person who had rented it represented himself as the owner and sold the property – with a forged deed – to some poor fellow who parts with his thousands and then finds at the end of the month he is to be evicted and his deed worth nothing?”

“How fiendishly ingenious!” cried Jane. “Oh I do hope that Frank was not involved in such; for he spent the entire of his legacy from his aunt on purchasing this house, and such might quite ruin someone!”

“Yes indeed” said Mr Armitage “And there’s plenty of flats as have swallowed a spider account of how it ain’t just the bridle lay as is daylight robbery. ‘Cept strictly speaking the bridle culls work at night. Highwaymen” he added in explanation.

“Dear me!” said Jane “Well I suppose at least I may be thankful that it is unlikely that Frank ever indulged in being a highwayman; I doubt he would have had the physical courage. And speaking of courage I think it behoves me even more to find the
moral
courage to find out what Frank may have been involved in; and to make redress where I may do so.”

“Nobody don’t expect you to do that, ma’am,” said Caleb, “and what he may have been up to and what I have conjectured as possible may be two different things; because conjecture ain’t fact, no not be a long chalk it ain’t. And I was just coming up with examples out of my head of what I have heard of to cover what a jarksman – a forger – might be needed for. And I think we can safely say he was involved in some kind of forgery – knowingly like or otherwise – because working late and taking care, that’s a discrepancy. It’s the discrepancies that is always the clues. Now what I wants to do next is to go see this Dolly; see what
she
knew about him. Men tell their mistresses what they doesn’t always tell their wives, see.”

“I see” said Jane “Might you get more from her with a woman asking questions?”

He laughed.

“What, borrow a wardress from one of the women’s gaols? Hard women they are; not so good at questioning as threatening.”

“Actually, Mr Armitage, I meant myself,” said Jane, “and approach her in the spirit of a shared bereavement.”

“MA’AM!” Caleb was shocked “A nice lady like you doesn’t want to meet such a female!”

“Why not?” said Jane. “Had Frank not offered for me I was anticipating becoming a governess; for my portion was non-existent. I have lived on the charity of relatives and friends of my late father. Had I been so unfortunate as to have been….used…. by the paterfamilias of a household where I worked – and I have heard suppressed rumours that though uncommon it has been known to happen – then if I bore a child I should be ruined and perchance in the same situation as the unfortunate Dolly.”

Caleb scratched the back of his neck.

“There’s no two ways about it, Ma’am, the lot of women isn’t easy” he said. “You are a brave lady if I may dare to say so; and I applaud your fortitude. And if that top-lofty abigail of yours who looks at me like I’m a slug won’t go you’ll take that tweenie-maid Mr Fowler talked about.”

“I’m not sure I want Molly exposed to such” said Jane. “No; Ella shall come. My own need for her is not so pressing that she can afford to offend me; because I am quite capable of dressing myself without need of an abigail.”

The apartment where the girl Dolly was maintained by Frank was in an unfashionable indeed rough part of the town and Jane was the recipient of many stares in her elegant black-trimmed gown and veils. Caleb took her elbow reassuringly to guide her towards the house. It was a structure of some three stories of timber framing and the wattle and daub between it pitted and damaged and darkened by grime to be almost as dark as the blackened beams. The street was filled with piles of refuse and filth, some of which steamed ominously. Caleb knew the neighbourhood well enough to know which door to take by Dolly’s rather sparse directions on her letters to Frank.

“’Ere, Mister yer don’ wanna go vere, mate; vere’s trouble” volunteered an urchin. “Murder gwine on, shouldn’t be s’prised.”

“Gawdstruth” said Caleb, letting go of Jane’s arm and belting up the stairs. Jane began to follow.

Shortly a large and dirty individual came hurtling down with Caleb in hot pursuit. Jane pressed against the wall to let Caleb past and wished she had only had the presence of mind to trip the man he was chasing. Ella screamed and seemed about to have hysterics.

Jane slapped her; it was no time for such displays.

She tripped on up the stairs and entered the rather dingily tawdry room of her husband’s mistress much hung about with cheap cambric and Persian silk hangings that were uniformly too demandingly pink to be at all tasteful.

The girl Dolly was tied to a chair sobbing loudly, her rose coloured gown torn away and burns on her face and bosom. The poker, thrown down in a hurry, lay in the tatters of the torn gown smoking ominously. Jane picked up the poker and threw it into the hearth where a small fire had been coaxed to greater heat, and stamped quickly on the smouldering cotton gown.

“I shall have you out of there in a brace of shakes” said Jane firmly, reaching for her sewing scissors in her reticule. The ropes were tough but Jane persevered in cutting open the knot and freeing the unfortunate young woman. Dolly was not very old, as Jane could see at a glance, the makeup ruined by her tears of anguish making her look almost like a little girl who has been at her mother’s dressing table to play at being grown up. The girl was well developed but below the line of face paint her skin had a dewy freshness to it that made it a shame to spoil it with makeup. Her blonde hair looked to be quite natural too and not bleached with caustic soda or potash lye, either of which dried the hair and could burn the skin and which produced a characteristically brittle-looking and unnatural blonde. It did rather stand to reason that such treatments were bad for the hair, since potash lye was also used by tanners to help strip the hair from hides; however those of Dolly’s profession could not always afford, perhaps, to be nice about such things. The girl had big blue eyes to go with the hair, which being currently wide with fright and pain added to her youthful appearance, and Jane’s heart went out to her. There might be very little behind those eyes resembling an original thought but in a way that made the girl all the more vulnerable.

Dolly swore as feeling returned to her hands and wrists; and Jane winced, but went into the bedroom to see if there was an ewer of water.

There was; and she stripped off a pillowslip to get at the underslip which was less soiled to soak in the water to lay against the young Paphian’s burns to soothe them.