Elizabeth Kidd (19 page)

He leaned back against the wall opposite the table and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Robin looked perplexed.

“I’m not sure I follow that.”

Kedrington straightened and reached for his hat. “Never mind. I think I shall pay a call at the shop myself. Perhaps I can save ourselves the drudgery of watching it, as well as Grillon’s, by greasing a few palms.”

“Who’s watching Grillon’s now?”

“Lieutenant Fairfax. I thought it was safe to put him on during the day. I suspect that Metaxis works by night and more than likely sleeps the day through.”

“Will you be back here tonight?”

“Sooner than that, I hope. We need to gather the other men to put our plan in motion to catch the thieves before yet another piece disappears. But first, there is something I need to look into.”

“What?”

“If I tell you, you’ll do it for me.”

“Of course, if I can.”

“You can’t, so don’t ask. Rest for now.”

He left the room, closing the door behind him to cut off any protest Robin might make. He did not intend to put any of his friends in danger, or even discomfort if he could help it, so the less Robin knew ahead of time, the better.

What he had found to explore was a passageway into the bowels of the building—or to be precise, he imagined, into the underground area originally excavated for some other building, whose construction had been halted while the marbles remained in their temporary structure above them. The likelihood was that “temporary” would last no more than another month or six weeks, but that was more than enough time to remove all the original marbles if that was what the plotters intended. And if they were not apprehended before they could go any further.

* * * *

The viscount returned to Burlington House two hours later, having frustrated himself in one quest but made better progress with another. He had first gone to several locations in the more fashionable parts of London with the intent to try the mysterious key he had taken from the dead man in the less fashionable East End—and had ended cursing his own impulse to take it.

He had been somewhat more successful in impressing the foreman of the men who loaded packing goods for shipment from the warehouse in back of the Long Acre shop with his rank and ready money into revealing the names of certain of the shop’s clients. He was not entirely certain that the man believed the tale he had spun about urgent government business requiring the utmost discretion, but the guineas he was prepared to part with was enough to tighten the lip of even the most suspicious foreman.

He decided against announcing his return to Burlington House to Robin, however, until after he had a chance to make his explorations of the underground area of the building. Thus, he slipped into the rear entrance using his copy of the key Robin had given him and from there stole around the back of the display area to a door half hidden behind the largest friezes.

It was not, he noted, a large enough opening to bring even the relatively small horses’ heads from the corners of the east pediment through, so there must be other doors invisible from the outside. He would need to find those.

He closed the door softly behind him, but remained in the dark for only a moment. Finding his way by touch, he located the lantern he had earlier hung on the wall and lighted it.

He was inside a passage that seemed to run the length of the building above in approximately a northerly direction. He continued with silent steps along the passage, running his hand along the outer wall. Presently he came to a set of shelves built into the wall and containing only some broken pieces of plaster, apparently the remains of the decorations of some other house, or perhaps an earlier version of Burlington House itself.

Kedrington ran his hand along the shelves and around the sides until he came to a hole concealed behind a packing case, which he was easily able to shift. He put his hand into the hole and felt, with satisfaction, a latch on the other side. He pushed it up, and the whole wall of shelving opened slightly inwards.

A glance at the outline of this new door told him that when fully opened into the area behind, it was more than large enough to accommodate the first frieze that had gone missing, but he did not open it fully. Instead, he opened it only wide enough to slip through, then closed the door behind him.

He was now in what looked like the yard of a posting inn, except that it was entirely enclosed by what must appear from the outside like the side of a warehouse. Before him, the ground sloped downward slightly, and what would have been the carriage entrance to the inn disappeared under the floor of the structures above, some two hundred yards ahead of him.

He walked down the road, noting footprints and wheel tracks in the dust beneath his feet. He wondered what had been in this part of London centuries ago—an inn? A house in medieval times? The question interested him, but he dismissed it from his mind for later academic study. Now he must concentrate on where he was going.

Under where the adjacent building met the one he had entered from, the ceiling was lower, but the road wider, lined on top by supporting beams and on either side by wooden pillars. Behind those, a narrow foot passage paralleled the roadway.

He stopped to examine the supports, wondering idly what was above them. He pulled out a compass to orient himself; he would have to explore the street next, to see what buildings adjoined that which held the marbles.

He heard a noise just then, and went still. He listened for a moment, and heard nothing more. Nonetheless, he blew out the lantern and went still again, listening.

Then he heard them, barely audible on the soft earth.

Footsteps.

Chapter 17

Lady Kedrington descended from her carriage in front of Grillon’s Hotel, uncertain what to do next.

“You may go,” she said to the coachman, who looked as if he would refuse to leave her there alone, so she added, “Return for me in twenty minutes.”

Still looking doubtful, the coachman nonetheless did as he was bade and drove off. The concierge, recognizing quality even when it did not arrive in a crested conveyance, bowed and inquired how he might help her.

Antonia smiled sweetly through the veil she had artfully fashioned on the way to the hotel from the swath of muslin which had decorated her hat.

“I am to meet my cousin here,” she whispered in a breathless tone which she hoped would both disguise her voice and give the doorman the impression that she had an assignation about which she wished him to remain discreet. She pressed a coin into his hand to emphasize this point.

“Certainly, my lady,” said the doorman, bowing. “Please go in and inquire at the desk.”

She entered by the door he held open to her, and it was only when she was standing inside the hotel that Antonia noticed her footman a discreet distance behind her, having apparently followed her in without her knowledge.

“William!” she whispered.

“My lady?”

“Kindly wait over there.” She motioned toward a corner of the lobby half hidden in the shadows.

“May I not make your inquiries for you?” William asked, as reluctant as the coachman to let her out of his sight. Antonia reflected ruefully that she had forgotten how surrounded she normally was by persons determined to cosset her. That, it seemed, was why Duncan could succeed at his spying, while she could not even make the smallest attempt at it without revealing herself.

“No,” she said baldly. “Go away.”

Torn between duty and disobedience, William complied, but only so far as the pillar beside the staircase, from where he could still see his mistress, even if she suddenly bolted for the stairs. Antonia approached the desk.

“I am to meet my cousin here,” she said to the clerk, repeating her story for lack of a more original one. “His name is Mr. Metaxis.”

The clerk eyed her balefully, but appeared to accept that a very fair, obviously English, beauty should be related in any way to a very dark, foreign personage of hitherto solitary habits.

“That gentleman has not yet come down,” the clerk told her.

“Oh, then he is in the hotel?”

“Yes, madam. Shall I send a message to his room?”

“Oh, no—that is, he knows I will be here. I shall wait.”

“There is a ladies’ parlor through that door, madam.”

Antonia glanced in the direction he indicated. “Oh…ah, thank you, no. I have my servant with me. I shall wait in that chair over there.”

She smiled again and went away quickly when another patron demanded the clerk’s attention. She sat down in a large chair, prepared to wait. William moved closer to her, but when she glared at him, he said nothing and moved to stand behind her, where she could not see him. Antonia accepted his presence in a spirit of resignation. And, she was forced to admit to herself, she did feel safer with a familiar guardian. Not to mention that the clerk would not think it quite so peculiar to see her escorted by a servant.

She soon almost forgot William and was taking a lively interest in the persons who paraded before her field of vision. Grillon’s was known as the military man’s hotel, but very few of its patrons were actually in uniform. She supposed it had been a different case when they were still at war, but since Waterloo, most of the army had been demobilized, and those who had homes to go to doubtless did.

A woman of middle age but youthful figure, gowned in a striking, if slightly vulgar, emerald green creation, stood speaking with three gentlemen at once. Antonia wondered if she could be what was referred to as an “abbess”—a woman who ran a house of ill repute. She could not be entirely unrespectable, or doubtless she would not have been let into the hotel which, while not patronized by the
ton
, was not disdained by decent, even distinguished, travelers and diners.

Absorbed in these musings, she was startled when a voice said suddenly, “Tonia! Good God, what are you doing here?”

She looked up to see her brother staring at her.

“Shh! Do sit down, Carey, and stop that racket.”

He did so, in another large chair which he pulled closer to hers, but went on, “What’s that thing you’ve got over your face? I should not have recognized you.”

“That is precisely the object, you widgeon. How
did
you recognize me?”

Carey glanced up at William, but when Antonia turned her head to the footman, he had resumed his bland expression and disinterested manner.

“Traitor!” she muttered.

“Never mind that,” Carey said. “Answer my question.”

“What question?”

“
Tonia…!
”

“Shh! I am looking for Dimitri Metaxis, of course. Isn’t that what you are doing here as well?”

“Yes, it is,” he said, seizing the point. “Which is why there is no need for you to be sitting about in a public place like a common—”

“Don’t even say it. I am no such thing. Besides, however much I discourage him, I do have William.”

“Nonetheless—”

“Carey, wait!” she interrupted urgently. “I think I see him! Look over there!”

Carey displayed more subtlety than his sister would have credited him with by looking instead into a long mirror on the wall above their heads. Only when he had confirmed what he saw did he lean toward her and whisper, “Stay where you are until I am out of sight. Then go home.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but he added, “Or I’ll tell Duncan.”

“Oh, very well!” she promised unwillingly.

He rose then, slowly, so as not to draw attention to himself, and turned to face the desk. Unfortunately, just at that moment, the clerk pointed in Antonia’s direction, and Metaxis turned and saw them. Antonia looked back at a masculine version of Elena Melville—taller, handsome, his black hair curlier than hers, but obviously her brother. He glanced from her to Carey, who was standing very still in an effort to blend into the wainscoting, and then abruptly turned and made for a door behind the desk.

“Blast!” said Carey, and followed.

Antonia rose, but there was no point in following the two men. There was, for that matter, no longer any point to remaining inside the hotel.

“Come along, William.”

She was astonished to discover, upon emerging from the hotel, that less than half an hour must have passed, for her carriage was waiting on the pavement in front of her.

William opened the door for her, but before she stepped up she said to him, “You may now make yourself truly useful, William, by climbing up on the box and instructing Denby to look for Carey and Mr. Metaxis—that gentleman we saw in the hotel. They cannot have gone far yet.”

William, apparently getting in to the spirit of the thing at last, did as he was told with alacrity, and shortly they were underway. Antonia raised her veil and looked out the window to discover that they had turned down a narrow alley. She could see nothing ahead of her and only the brick walls of buildings to the sides, so, frustrated, she pulled her head back in again.

At the end of the alley, they paused, then crossed a broader thoroughfare which, Antonia was startled to realize when she glanced out, was Bond Street. Traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, was much heavier here, and Antonia could distinguish no particular person in the throng. She drew farther back into the carriage to avoid being seen and hoped that William had a better vantage point on the perch, for she could not tell where they were now.

When the carriage came to a halt a few moments later, however, that hope vanished. William climbed down and came to her window to say that he had seen neither Carey nor “the foreign gentleman” again.

“Were would you be wishful to go now, my lady?”

“Where are we, William?”

“Cork Street, my lady. I saw Mr. Fairfax come this way, but when we turned up the street, he was no longer in sight.”

Antonia pondered this a moment, glanced back the way they had come, and said, “I wish to get out.”

William obligingly helped her down, then followed as she proceeded up the street, glancing into every doorway and mews she passed. There were houses on only the west side of the street, the east side being occupied by gardens, which effectively limited her search.