The Spider's Touch (26 page)

A flicker in his gaze revealed an awareness of her shyness, but it quickly vanished beneath the weight of the day’s events. Hester thanked him for his efforts on behalf of the family. He had spared them not only the inconvenience of dealing with the authorities, but also the distress of seeing that Sir Humphrey’s body was cared for.

He did not bother to deny it, which would only have called greater attention to his kindness, but instead moved straight to his concerns.

“I wonder—and you must forgive me for asking—what did Mayfield have to say when he came home?”

Hester was not surprised by his curiosity on this point, only that he wished to discuss it with her.

“He was concerned that there might be some suspicion that he had lost his temper with Sir Humphrey again. He insists there is nothing in it, however.”

Lord Lovett leaned one elbow on the arm of his chair and rubbed his eyes. Hester had never seen anyone so spent. “I worried that that would be the case, but the story is bound to come out, you know. Once Cove’s murder is generally announced, Sir William is certain to come forward with his evidence. Failing that, Mrs. Jamison may choose to make the accusation herself.” He looked grimly at Hester. “I must ask you this, Mrs. Kean, though it pains me to do it. Do you believe your cousin could have killed my poor friend?”

Hester felt a lump rising in her throat. Lord Lovett was the first to express a genuine feeling about Sir Humphrey. The others had been shocked and upset, which was natural under the circumstances, but none of them had evinced a sincere feeling of pity.

She was spared an immediate answer by the arrival of their tray. She poured a glass of wine for Lord Lovett, and took a dish of tea for herself. As new as she was to drinking it, she found it amazingly restorative.

After the servant left them alone again, she said, “I am afraid I cannot answer that question, sir. I know you will think me prejudiced, since Dudley is my first cousin. I should not have thought him capable of such an act, however, and I do believe him when he says he is innocent. But how can anyone be sure?”

He nodded and sighed. Then a rueful smile appeared. “You can see why I was not ready to speak to Lord and Lady Hawkhurst. Although there was more to it than that. You are an intelligent woman, Mrs. Kean, and I believe it would behoove us to put our heads together on this.”

Hester felt a warmth, spreading through her body. She could not be entirely comfortable with the manner of his compliment, but she was glad that it dealt with her mind, rather than with a physical attribute she knew she did not possess. She would never have believed a compliment about her appearance.

“Very well,” she said. “Then I should like to ask you some questions if I might.”

He seemed surprised, but acquiesced with an ironic smile. “Ask whatever you like, as long as you leave my romantic escapades out.”

Hester flushed. “I wanted to ask you about the other gentlemen in our party, sir.”

“Ahhh .
...
Well, under the circumstances, I promise not to feel piqued. How can I help you?”

Ignoring this flirtatious statement, she said, “I was in the box when Mr. Blackwell departed. At first he seemed disinclined to take the air. And I would have wagered that he had no intention of leaving, until he saw someone down in the pit. It seemed, as if he had spotted someone he did not wish to encounter, for he almost hid himself along the edge of the box. Then he could not leave quickly enough, and only remembered to make his excuses when he noticed I was there.”

“Did you look down to see who might have caught his attention?”

“No.” Hester squirmed when she recalled how she’d been occupied. “I was rather lost in thought.”

“And he said nothing about where he might be going?”

“Only that he had forgotten a previous engagement—not that I believed him. It is the polite excuse that everyone gives when she wish to be somewhere else.”

“Hmm.” Lord Lovett mused. “It is possible that he killed Humphrey, of course, but I wouldn’t know why. Blackwell is a bit of a mystery.”

“Have you known him long, sir?”

He gave her quick, searching look. “I?” Then, as if making a conscious decision, he nodded. “You will hear this from someone else, if not from me, but yes, I have known him for a number of years, although never very well. We run into each other at Lady Oglethorpe’s occasionally. Blackwell is
...
a man who is often out of the country.”

His emphasis on the last few words as much as informed her that both of them were Jacobites, or, at least, that their sympathies lay that way. Hester could not help being flattered by his confidence, because he had given signs that he meant for her to know. She was not so intensely political that someone else’s party affiliation would come as an affront to her, but he could not know that. She was honoured by the risk he had taken.

“Sir Humphrey was often in Lady Oglethorpe’s company, too, I understand.”

He sighed again. “Yes, he was. Poor old Cove.” He did not elaborate, but asked, “Was there anything else?”

“Yes. And please forgive me, for I know you are friends. But—Colonel Potter—I know he was angry that he did not get the position as Lord Hawkhurst’s secretary. And I believe he thought he lost it because of something Sir Humphrey let slip. My lord would not wish to have a person under suspicion of disloyalty, living and working in this house.”

“You think that Potter could have killed Sir Humphrey out of revenge?” He seemed to consider this notion seriously.

“I do not know what to believe. That is why I ask you if it is possible.”

“My dear Mrs. Kean,” he said, and she thought she saw moisture in his eyes. “Anything is possible now. I should not have said two weeks ago that Humphrey would be murdered. But now that it has happened
...
.” He did not finish, but looked dismally down at his hands.

Of a sudden he jerked, and his gaze flew to meet hers.

“What is it?” she said. Her eyes moved to the spot he was rubbing on the outside of his right palm. It looked very much like dried blood.

Hester felt the colour draining from her cheeks. Her pulse took great leaps. Lord Lovett had gone pale, too. He shuddered, before meeting her eyes.

“Yes, I’m afraid it is Sir Humphrey’s. I thought I had washed it off. I helped to lift him onto the litter, you see.”

Now that his shock had worn off, his colour returned. Hester’s was not so quickly restored, but she made an effort not to appear unsettled.

The blood made her think of something she had not considered.

“When Sir Humphrey was stabbed, would not some blood have stained his murderer’s clothing?”

She blurted out the question so rapidly that Lord Lovett was taken aback. As soon as he saw the direction of her thoughts, however, he relaxed.

“There won’t be anything to help us there, I’m afraid. After you left, we found what the murderer used to cover himself.

“One of the theatre servants spotted it. Humphrey left a trail of blood from the place where he had been stabbed to the box. The murderer stabbed him through a curtain. From the amount of Humphrey’s blood on it, it is certain that it was used to prevent any blood from spurting onto his clothes.”

“Where was this curtain? In an empty box?”

“Not at all. It hung at the back of a box that was between ours and the stairs. In the same corridor in which everyone from the boxes had to walk.”

Hester felt a thrill of terror, when, with an angry smile, he said, “Whatever we can say about the man who murdered Sir Humphrey, it is certain that he does not lack audacity.”

Chapter Twelve

Heaven forming each on other to depend,

A master, or a servant, or a friend,

Bids each on other for assistance call,

Till one Man’s weakness grows the strength of all.

Wants, frailties, passions, closer still ally

The common interest, or endear the tie.

To these we owe true friendship, love sincere,

Each home-felt joy that life inherits here.

II. vi.

A full day after his meeting with the Duke of Ormonde, Gideon could not decide if he should wait any longer or ride to Lorraine to deliver his news. To linger indefinitely in London, with nothing to do but exercise his horse, seemed to him the worst possible waste of his time. The rumblings in London made him believe that something had to break soon, either another riot, which might spontaneously turn into a rebellion, or an even greater move against the Jacobites on the part of the government. Even the King had been rattling his saber. He planned another review of his Foot-Guards in Hyde Park on the morrow. But since Ormonde still seemed disinclined to act, there was really nothing worth reporting to James. Until something—at least
one
thing—changed, Gideon reckoned that he should remain in London just a little while longer.

Sunday passed without any news. It was not in Gideon’s nature to wait, yet being unresolved about the rightness of James’s cause, he would not do anything himself to urge a rebellion. The Duke’s indecisiveness, however, made him uneasy. If Ormonde thought his popularity with the mob would protect him from the Crown, he was wrong. If anything, the demonstrations of affection and support for him—many of them sparked by Jacobite agents in place, Gideon had learned—would make the government all the more eager to see him removed. If leading James’s army had been left to Gideon, he would have struck before the unrest of the past few weeks could have a chance to settle down. And if there were truly no intention of fighting, the best thing to do would be to inform the Pretender that his hopes were groundless. It was cruelty of the meanest sort to encourage him to believe in, and every second of his existence anticipate, a fate that would never be his.

These thoughts circled through Gideon’s mind through an idle day and still occupied him on Monday, when he paid a visit to his horse. He had Looby saddled and rode him across Smithfield, down Long Lane, past the Barbican, along Chiswell Street, and through upper Moor Fields, where the aspect was countryside. They walked, trotted, and galloped to the Essex Road and back, before Gideon returned him to his midday fodder.

Setting out to find his own dinner, he came across an oyster seller and nearly bought a barrel to eat. But on second thought he decided to find a place to sit down. Gulping down oysters in the street or back at the inn would not be conducive to the kind of thinking he had to do. Oysters were a particular favourite, but he could always find them when his mind was more settled.

He did not walk far before being tempted by the smells coming from a coffee house that doubled as a cookshop. Gideon went in and took a bench by a window so he could watch the traffic as it passed. Within a few minutes he received the ordinary, a heaping platter of mutton, which had been dried, cut in shivers, and boiled like Dutch beef.

Staying on at the White Horse with nothing to do and no acquaintance to speak to was the most daunting prospect he faced. He had already begun to regret leaving Tom behind in Kent. The inn’s morning fare was certainly good enough, and there was no shortage of cookshops in which to eat, but he hated dining alone. He had struck up conversations in some of the coffee houses, but inevitably found himself in a quandary when asked where he was from and what sort of work he did. Londoners were only slightly less wary of strangers than their country counterparts. And he could not bamboozle a wool merchant into believing him one of his fraternity, which left him little to say. There were always men who had rather talk than listen, and he had tried to attach himself to those. But no one could call a conversation of that ilk satisfactory, and he wondered how long he could tolerate this life without losing any sense of purpose he possessed. He also believed that his landlord would begin to think it odd that a merchant from the country stayed so long, particularly when he conducted no business at his lodgings, which was the custom. And when that happened, as it would, Gideon would be forced to move to another inn and wait again.

He had hoped to see Lord Peterborough. The earl had been a friend of his father’s, even though they had not always been on the same political side. Lord Peterborough was the sort of honest gentleman, who would have told him exactly what he thought of the Pretender’s chances. If Gideon had not had to wait for word from Ormonde, he might have gone to find the earl, but he knew he should not leave.

Besides, the introduction he had used at Ormonde House would not work at Peterborough House since the earl had not committed himself to James’s cause and would not know the cipher they used. Still Gideon wished he knew what the old man thought. He had a notion that Peterborough would be able to explain Ormonde’s indecision. But the earl had little reason to visit his Westminster house since he had been banned the Court and had lost his commission, too.

Mulling over the danger of presenting himself at the earl’s country house, he slowly retraced his steps to the inn. As he crossed the threshold, the landlord hailed him with the news that a letter had come for him in the Penny Post. Gideon took the letter, which had been addressed to Mr. Brown in a woman’s script. With a mixture of eagerness and worry, he unsealed the wafer and saw that it was from Mrs. Kean.

“Dear Sir,”
he read.
“At our last Meeting but one you extracted a Promise that if ever I should need Assistance, I should not hesitate to ask it of you. I find myself in such a Situation now. Rest assured that the Danger does not concern me, but one of my Relations, who might soon be placed in a Dilemma similar to yours.

“If you find you are able and willing to provide me with Information and Counsel, I shall be most earnestly grateful. If not, or if this Message never reaches you, which I shall assume if I do not receive a Response, then you may still be certain of my continued Friendship. Although I do now see the Foolishness in expressing the latter if you are not even there to receive it.