Maggie MacKeever (9 page)

“So this,” mused the Baroness, “is what Leda may look forward to.”

At least, Gibbon thought, looking down at her, the Baroness undertook these forays in disguise. In a hideous purple gown, with a gaudy shawl around her shoulders and a garish red wig upon her head, Dulcie looked like the abbess of a brothel. As such she was indistinguishable among the crowd.

“It is my painful duty to tell you that you have but a few more days to live,” intoned the Lord Mayor. Dulcie, fine eyes narrowed to thin slits, watched him intently. “It is to be hoped that the sacrifice of your lives may induce others to abstain from embarking upon criminal careers.”

“Outrageous!” announced the Baroness, so decisively that the Lord Mayor paused mid-speech. She swept grandly from the courtroom. Gibbon followed, so embarrassed that even his ears flamed red.

Oblivious to her butler’s chagrin, Lady Bligh stepped into the paved courtyard. “That was vastly edifying,” she remarked, as she adjusted the bright green bonnet that sat atop her garish curls. “Unless Leda is to come to a singularly unpleasant end, we must make up our minds to take the field.”

Gibbon’s blood ran chill at the plurality of that pronoun. “I beg that you will allow me to fetch you a carriage, my lady. This is not the sort of neighborhood that you are accustomed to.”

Dulcie stepped into the street and observed her reflection in a broken shop window. “Grotesque, am I not? And most artfully done! We will walk, Gibbon. The exercise will do you good.”

“Very well, my lady.” The butler blushed to the roots of his lank white hair when his mistress took his arm. “Though it’s not at all what’s proper, and I don’t like it above half.”

“I vow you are afraid of your own shadow, Gibbon,” said the Baroness cheerfully. “And you’ll escort me next to an actual hanging—and I pray it may not be Leda’s!—if you exhibit further sulkiness.” Gibbon glanced at the grand old church of St. Sepulchre’s and the bell that rang out the doom of condemned prisoners. His mistress was not prone to idle threats.

They passed by slums and homes that had been mansions a century ago, their rotting walls inhabited now by vermin and vice; by the Newgate meat market; by the College of Surgeons and Surgeons’ Hall where the bodies of executed felons were taken for dissection. With each step Gibbon’s spirits sank lower. Lady Bligh paused outside Bart’s Hospital in nearby Giltspur Street, and turned to gaze sternly at her butler.

“What are you most afraid of, Gibbon?” she asked. “The denizens of the neighborhood, or the likelihood that I’ll make you return Lord Barrymore’s stickpin? Set your mind at rest. I daresay he’ll never miss it. Though if I were you, I’d be loath to part company with that particular piece.”

“Lord Barrymore,” Gibbon ventured, “was with Lord Warwick’s valet when the body was discovered. I thought you might wish to know, my lady, it seeming a trifle queer.”

Dulcie frowned. “Warwick and Tolly hardly seem kindred spirits, though I believe they belong to the same club. Continue, Gibbon. What else have you learned?”

Gibbon had kept up his contacts with the criminal element, including thieves, pawnbrokers and dealers in stolen goods, though not with an eye to assisting his mistress in her infernal inquiries; and though Crump was hardly approachable in regard to such things, there were other Bow Street men who were proof against neither discreet questioning nor bribery. “Warwick had a lot of enemies. He wasn’t above ferreting out mistakes and threatening to expose them if his silence wasn’t bought.”

“I thought as much,” mused Lady Bligh.

“Warwick’s inquest provided little in the way of sensation.” Gibbon, at his mistress’s insistence, had attended that event. “Bow Street is convinced of Miss Langtry’s guilt, based primarily on the fact that the murder was committed with her pistol. There’s no doubt of
that:
the gunsmith who provided her the pistol came forward and made oath that the bullet in the, er, body and the bullets remaining in the pistol were all cast in the same mold.”

The Baroness skirted a drunk snoring in the gutter. “They contained some distinguishing mark, I suppose?”

“Yes, my lady. There was a very small round pimple on all of them, produced by a tiny hole in the mold.” Gibbon cleared his throat. “Miss Langtry, however, claims that the weapon was stolen from her only hours before the murder, and her story is corroborated by various of her employees.”

“Leda has made a rare mull of it!” Dulcie shook her head so emphatically that both her wig and her plumage were knocked askew. “My patience with her is entirely exhausted. What’s this Crump let slip about a possible alibi?”

Gibbon glanced nervously over his shoulder. “Pray moderate your manner, my lady. I’m not wishful of drawing attention to ourselves.”

“We already have. We’re being followed even now.” Gibbon wore a face of perfect horror and the Baroness patted his arm. “Now, what of Leda’s alibi?”

Gibbon reflected that he’d lived like a duck hunted by a spaniel ever since making the Baroness’s acquaintance. “Everyone thinks it’s so much humbug, my lady. There
is
something else queer, and that concerns Warwick’s valet.”

“And what might that queer thing be?” Dulcie moved closer to her butler and he tensed. “Relax, Gibbon! I simply don’t care to be overheard.”

Gibbon was far from being reassured. He was well aware of his station in life even if his mistress was not, and though he adored her he thought it shocking that she should even deign to touch his hand, let alone cling to his arm so tightly that her green plumes tickled his nose. “Yes, my lady,” he said repressively. “Simpkin—that’s the valet’s name—seems to have come into money suddenly. He’s been wasting the ready in prime style ever since Warwick died.”

“Odd that Simpkin has not come to the attention of Bow Street. I fancy it may also be to our advantage.” The Baroness sneezed. “And Crump is wearing a new darkish colored wig, without powder, which becomes him, wretched man.”

Crump had endured a long and arduous day, which began the night before when he and his brother officers had been called upon to attend a masquerade held at the Argyll Rooms, where by way of novelty the revelers competed to pull off the head of a live goose hanging upside down. From there the Runner had proceeded to Ludgate where the well-known jewelers, Messrs. Rundle and Brydges, Court silversmiths, had been relieved by sleight of hand of £35,000 worth of merchandise. Crump had taken down the particulars of the man and woman who were thought to be involved and had arranged for handbills to be distributed, providing descriptions of both the culprits and the jewels and offering a reward for useful information. No fewer than nine men had been examined that day, and careful watch was being kept on the home of a notorious fence who not only organized burglary on a grand scale but also had elaborate arrangements in his house for melting down precious metals. Crump was not confident, however, that the crime would be so easily solved. If this latest robbery had been committed by the same felons as the previous crimes, the stolen items would not soon resurface. Nor would the thieves be so foolish as to commit a robbery in broad daylight without donning adequate disguise.

Crump was no stranger to the fine art of camouflage. He often had recourse to a makeup box purchased from a starving actor at considerable expense. At the present moment even Crump’s own mother would not have recognized him, for the Runner’s genial features were obscured by a shaggy wig and a hideous false beard. The clothes he wore were filthy rags, unrelieved by even one of the waistcoats of which he was so fond. Crump was hot on the trail of interesting quarry indeed.

Crump had not left Messrs. Rundle and Brydges empty-handed, having in his possession a scrap of material found at the scene of the crime. The Runner was an expert in such matters, having even appropriated an old gown of Leda’s that bore some suspicious stains. That those odd splotches couldn’t be proved to have been caused by blood didn’t deter him; Crump had a theory that accounted for the various crimes, one in which Leda Langtry played no small role. The robbery at Warwick’s chambers nicely linked her to the other recent burglaries.

Yet even with Leda in quod the thefts continued, which indicated a criminal organization of no small size. Sir John might believe there was no connection between Warwick’s murder and the robberies, but Sir John wasn’t as clear thinking in some matters as a Chief Magistrate should be. Witness his fondness for the annoying Lady Bligh. There were seven Public Offices in the Metropolis, all of them modeled after Bow Street. Of all those guardians of the peace, Crump was the only man with ill fortune enough to encounter the aggravating Baroness.

Crump’s resentment was not without foundation. He’d spent the entire afternoon trailing that lady, a pursuit that had taken him to, among other places, Gunther’s, the famed pastry cook in Berkeley Square, and to the British Museum, where an appalling muddle of works of art and natural curiosities was preserved in a miserable building. Crump had been forced to hide behind an enormous stuffed giraffe while her ladyship and Lord Barrymore waxed enthusiastic over an enormous pair of stag’s antlers. Only when the pursuit led him to Sadler’s Wells in north London did Crump discover that the lady in the huge, concealing white gauze bonnet adorned lavishly with tea roses was not Dulcie at all, but her niece, Mignon. At least he had avoided sitting through a production of a Shakespearean play, but that was scant consolation for the grievous waste of his time.

There was a further reason for Crump’s annoyance. He could not imagine why Lady Bligh should wander in trollop’s attire through slums where even a watchman would not willingly risk his neck, instead of disporting herself more properly at the theatre or at the velvet-covered
écarté
table. But there she was, hanging on her butler in a most shocking manner; and here Crump was, in pursuit.

Lady Bligh leaned even closer to her companion and murmured a few words. Crump edged closer. The Runner had no doubt that the Baroness, if she so wished, as she so obviously did not, could be remarkably informative.

“Lord Byron,” said Dulcie to her butler, “has said that the three greatest men of this new century are Brummell, Napoleon and himself, in that order. The silly man quite forgot Bat.” She sneezed. “Do stop pouting, Gibbon. I suppose you wished to accompany the Baron upon his adventures. You would have been greatly shocked, you know. The male population of France has been sadly depleted, and the fields are being cultivated by women and children while the bones of their men folk lay bleaching in godforsaken lands. Bat has taken upon himself the consolation of an entire nation of lonely, grieving women. No doubt he will quite exhaust himself.”

Gibbon was long inured to the extremely liberal philosophy of his mistress, and very much aware of the stealthy approach of their tracker. To keep up with the Baroness, he had developed eyes in the back of his head.

“Much can be forgiven a man with sufficient wit to call France’s new ruler ‘Louis the Gouty,’ as Byron does,” said Dulcie, then turned on their startled shadow a smile so wicked that it would have done justice to Lucifer himself. “That lamp post is hardly of sufficient width to conceal you Crump.”

Crump stepped forward, hot with embarrassment, and fidgeted under the Baroness’s amused gaze. “It is a sad day—or evening!” she said, “when a lady cannot go about her business without Bow Street trailing at her heels.”

“Bow Street,” retorted Crump, “might be very interested in that business, Baroness! It seems very much to me as if you’re up to some devilment.”

“Does it?” inquired Dulcie. “ You do look a complete quiz in that abominable get-up.”

Crump refrained from retorting that Lady Bligh’s own attire was hardly more fashionable. “I have a job of work to do, my lady, and it’d go a great deal forwarder if you weren’t so determined to hinder it.”

“Hinder you? A dire accusation, indeed. I see nothing will do but that I must confess, since you have caught me, as it were, in the very act.” The Baroness moved forward and took his arm, leaning so heavily against him that he stumbled. “You have found me out!” she whispered. “I have a dreadful weakness for vulgarity.”

The Runner might have chosen to take exception to this clanker, had he not then lost his balance and gone sprawling in the filthy street. “Good gracious!” cried Dulcie. “Gibbon, help him to his feet.”

“Never mind!” Crump rescued his wig from the gutter and clapped it onto his head. Sir John, of course, would never believe that the fragile-looking Lady Bligh had tumbled him to the ground. The Runner glared at Gibbon, who was making no attempt to hide his grin, and wondered how that worthy might be persuaded to surrender himself to Bow Street as King’s evidence.

Dulcie bent over and rose with a small battered notebook in her hand. “I believe this is yours,” she said, and extended it to Crump. “It must have dropped out of your pocket when you fell.”

There were a great many items resting in Crump’s ample pockets, but his Occurrence Book had not been among them. Indeed, he suddenly realized that he had not set eyes on that valuable little volume since he last visited Bligh House. Recalling the extreme cordiality of Dulcie’s leave-taking, he eyed her askance.

The bold Baroness leaned forward and ruffled his false beard. “He who eats plums with the devil,” she said cheerfully, “must not be surprised if he gets the stones spat in his eye.”

Chapter 9

Lady Bligh stared up at the tall, black-gray building with its narrow windows and an arched gateway adorned by three grim statues. Atop the castellated roof, a windmill drew some of the foul air out of the prison. Newgate was notorious for the ill usage accorded the prisoners who lived there in stinking filth, the fortunate ones fed by friends or relatives, the others by turnkeys who charged exorbitant prices for inedible food. The Baroness swept forward. After a brief conference with a gap-toothed gaoler, during which several coins changed hands, she vanished inside.

Newgate was a complex establishment, containing a Master Debtors and a Master Felons side for those who could afford to buy decent accommodations; a Common Side for Debtors and Felons, for those who could not; the Press Yard, the Castle and the Gate; and cells and dungeons beside. Lady Bligh was conducted to the Press Yard.