Yvonne Goes to York (8 page)

He put his arms around her and drew her close. For a moment, she leaned against him and he could hear the beating of her heart. ‘I will take care of you,’ he said huskily.

She pulled free, her face flaming. ‘I am quite well able to take care of myself,’ she said tearfully, ‘without stooping to become some English aristocrat’s kept creature!’

He had meant it as a proposal of marriage, he realized in a dazed way, but she was looking at him with such disgust mixed with fury that he found his temper rising. Be damned to her!

‘I merely meant that I will fund your keep in York if you have not sufficient money,’ he said icily. ‘Then, when your father is found, he may repay me if he wishes.’

‘Oh, I am sorry,’ she said weakly. ‘Of course, I am grateful to you. You see,’ she said timidly, looking up into his bleak eyes, ‘in the households where I work I am in the way of being propositioned.’

This had the effect of making him angrier than ever as a sharp stab of jealousy shot through him. But he forced himself to say quietly, ‘I will now escort you back to the inn. The policeman knows where to find us if he wants us. You will feel better once you have seen Miss Pym again. Was the door of the room standing open?’

‘No, I got the key from the greengrocer’s.’ She held it out. He took it and locked the door securely.

When he returned the key to the greengrocer after telling Yvonne to wait for him outside the shop, he asked the man, ‘Is this a spare key? Would Mr Grenier have the other?’

‘No, your honour, the key’s right there with t’others on a nail on the wall by the door.’

‘Not very safe, is it?’ commented the marquis. ‘Anyone could help themselves.’

‘I’m here in the shop from six in the morning till late. Mr Grenny, he says to leave the key there ’cos it’s a big one to carry around and the other rooms are empty.’

‘Did anyone ask about the keys? Any visitors?’

The greengrocer wrinkled his earth-smeared brow. ‘Well, blessed if I ain’t forgotten. It was a young chap, dressed very grand, come in one evening late and starts chatting and I was getting angry ’cos he wasn’t buying nothing. Kept poking about with his cane. He points to the keys and says, “What’s them for?” Told him for the rooms above and which ones were for what door but that there ain’t no one up there but a foreign gennelman. He goes away but then I sees him talking to an older man outside. Next thing, the older man comes in with the younger and the older one starts
talking about the weather and I don’t know what. Next thing, Mrs Battersby down the road comes in for leeks and after I’d served her, the fine gents is gone. Demme if they didn’t come back as I was putting up the shutters and the old one says as how he would like oranges. So I went to serve him, like.’

‘So they probably took the key, ransacked the room, and put it back.’

‘Why would I expect such a thing to happen?’ said the greengrocer defensively. ‘Folks around here is
law-abiding
. I shouldn’t ha’ let to a foreigner in the first place.’

‘It was not the foreigner’s fault, was it? Here, I will leave you a note for Mr Grenier. Should he return, he will know where to find me. Until then, keep that key somewhere safe, and should those two gentlemen come back, let me know.’ The marquis took out one of his cards and scribbled the name of the Pelican on the back of it. Then he produced a notepad and wrote a short note to Monsieur Grenier, telling him that his daughter was at the inn.

He went out to join Yvonne. ‘Things are looking better,’ he said as they walked along the road. He told her of the visit to the greengrocer’s of what had obviously been Ashton and Petit. ‘Had your father been there, there would have been some sort of a struggle,’ he said. ‘The greengrocer would have heard something. There is no back way out of that building that I can see.’

A thin soft rain was falling. ‘No hacks in this district,’ he said, looking about. ‘Your pretty bonnet will be ruined.’

‘I am beyond worrying about clothes,’ sighed Yvonne as he hurried her along.

They walked in silence back the way they had come.

Hannah and Benjamin were in the coffee-room and both looked startled to see Yvonne. Quickly the marquis explained what had happened.

Benjamin’s eyes lit up. Here was a way to make himself useful. ‘I’ll start right away, my lord,’ he said eagerly. ‘They’re bound to be at some inn in the city.’

‘See what you can do,’ said the marquis. ‘I think we should dine, Miss Pym – that is, if you have not already eaten?’

Hannah shook her head.

Yvonne leaned back in a chair, her eyes closed as the marquis ordered food to be served to them in a private parlour, her mind dimly registering again that the marquis did not seem to be impoverished in the slightest.

Benjamin went straight to the Bull, hoping to find Monsieur Petit and his friend Ashton, but not only were they not there but never had been. He trudged on around several more coaching-inns without success until it occurred to him that such as Petit, who could afford to hire a post-chaise from Grantham, might be found at a posting-house.

But at posting-house after posting-house he met the same reply. No one called Smith answering to the description of Petit and no one called Ashton either.

The earlier drizzle had changed to a steady
downpour
and Benjamin was weary and wet when he turned
in at the welcoming door of a tavern on the outskirts of the town. He had already decided he did not like York. So many old buildings. So many wood-and-wattle houses. London was much more modern, thought Benjamin, forgetting that the Great Fire had done much to get rid of a vast number of antique buildings in the capital.

After taking off his wet coat and hanging it up to dry and shaking the raindrops from his beaver hat, Benjamin approached the cubby-hole of a bar and asked the pretty girl behind it to fetch him a tankard of shrub. While she was getting it, he turned around and surveyed the low-raftered, smoky room. A fire had just been lit in the grate, and fat raindrops dropped clear down the old chimney and hissed on the flames. Two men were seated by the fire, conversing in low voices. Benjamin turned back and was just about to pass the time in a little gentle dalliance with the serving maid when he distinctly heard one of the men at the fire curse in French. He recognized it as French, for he had heard Monsieur Petit use the same word when the marquis had chided him on his bad language. So he picked up his tankard and ambled over to the fireplace and said cheerfully, ‘Any room for me? The fine weather has broken and I confess to being chilled.’

The two men were seated at a small table in front of the fire. They reluctantly made way for him, but glancing pointedly at all the other empty seats in the room.

They continued to converse in low voices, but in English.

 ‘Really nasty weather,’ volunteered Benjamin
cheerfully
, wondering if he had imagined that French oath.

‘Yes, very,’ agreed one of the men, and Benjamin brightened at the sound of the heavily accented English.

‘Are you French?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ came the reluctant reply.

‘Must introduce myself. Benjamin Chubb, footman.’ Benjamin held out his hand. First one and then the other shook it.

‘Our names are Chevenix and Deville,’ said
Monsieur
Deville.

‘Honoured. I see your glasses are empty. What’ll it be, gentlemen?’

‘Well …’ The two Frenchmen looked gratified, not being used to friendly treatment from Englishmen; despite the fact that there were thousands of French emigrés now resident in England, Messieurs Deville and Chevenix were used to being looked on with surly suspicion.

‘Yes, of course you will,’ said Benjamin, getting to his feet. ‘What you having, then?’

‘Claret, if you please.’

Benjamin called over to the serving girl, who brought a jug of claret and three glasses.

‘Now,’ said Benjamin, pouring wine for them, but deciding his own tankard of shrub was more to his taste, ‘confusion to Napoleon.’ The Frenchmen gravely drank the toast.

‘In London,’ said Benjamin, ‘lot of you people live in the one quarter. I mean like in Cavendish Square and
over in Sommers Town. Would there be a sort of French quarter in York?’

‘Not really a quarter,’ said Monsieur Deville. ‘We all live in one narrow street, not a very romantic name, Bucket Lane.’

‘You wouldn’t happen to have seen a tall Frenchman recently – white hair, pale eyes, yellar teeth, goes by the name of Monsieur Petit?’

Monsieur Deville shook his head. ‘A very common name. What does he do?’

Benjamin wrinkled his brow, thinking of what Yvonne had said. ‘Works in Paris, some sort o’ judge on a tribunal.’

Both men shot to their feet. Monsieur Chevenix was trembling. ‘Jacques Petit …
here
,’ he whispered.

‘Sit down, sit down,’ begged Benjamin. ‘I ain’t no friend o’ his. Fact is, he’s after someone my mistress wants to help. Sit down. I’ll tell you.’

Both men sat down gingerly, looking at Benjamin warily. He told them as much as he knew – how Yvonne had gone in search of her father, only to find him gone and his room rifled.

‘So you see,’ ended Benjamin urgently, ‘maybe this Petit has got hold of Grenier. So I’ve got to find him.’

‘We both know Claude Grenier,’ said Monsieur Deville after a long silence. ‘He left our street a couple of months ago. He did say he was expecting his daughter, but that someone had got a message to him saying his life might be in danger, so he decided to move away from us other French people where he might feel safer. I am afraid that is all we know. But
Monsieur Petit cannot openly come among us, for we would kill him. Where he can be, I do not know.’

Benjamin finished his tankard of shrub, thanked them and left. Outside, the rain had stopped falling and a gusty wind was blowing shreds of paper and straw up to the overhanging eaves of the old houses.

He stood under the flickering light of a parish lamp and took a cheroot out from a case in his pocket and after much fumbling with a tinder-box managed to light it. He did not dare smoke in front of Hannah, who was even more stern in her admonitions against smoking than King James the First had been.

Where, oh where could he find Ashton and Petit? He did not want to return to Hannah with so little news. Ashton! He had forgotten that Ashton might have been the one to choose a place to stay. And what would a fop like Ashton do, who scrounged and primped and preened? Why, he would try to get them accepted as house guests in some comfortable household. But which one and where?

The livery stables, he thought suddenly. They might have hired some sort of carriage or gig. His quarry would not continue to use a post-chaise for town visits. He walked back towards the centre of town and asked where he might find the largest livery stable and was directed to a mews near the Minster. Big livery stables, as Benjamin knew, hardly ever closed down for the night, York being a main centre on the road down from Scotland. An ostler told him he was lucky. Mr Peartree, who owned the stables, was working late in his office.

Mr Peartree was bent over his ledgers, a small wizened man who smelled strongly of horse. He nonetheless considered himself a cut above speaking to servants and only treated Benjamin civilly because Benjamin was no ordinary servant but a liveried footman and might have a powerful master.

Benjamin knew that the name of Hannah Pym would carry little weight and claimed the Marquis of Ware as his master. He wondered, said Benjamin, whether two gentlemen had called a short time ago to hire some sort of carriage. He gave a rapid and unflattering description of both Ashton and Petit.

He waited anxiously while Mr Peartree explored his wig meditatively with his quill-pen. Then Mr Peartree said, ‘I bring ’em to mind now. Old feller didn’t say much but the young one was all airs and graces and wanting a curricle at gig prices. What was it he said? We are going to Lord Wetherby’s at Bradfield Park.’ I says I didn’t care where they was going, I wasn’t letting my best curricle and horses out at cheap rates. So he paid up and the curricle came back all right, for they took one of my coachmen. Had he been going to drive it himself, I wouldn’t have let it go, not for any money, for he had a shifty look. When coachee told me he had dropped them at Bradfield Park, I confess I was surprised, them not looking like the type Lord
Wetherby
would entertain.’

Benjamin thanked him and strode back towards the Pelican. He felt he had been out all night, but the Minster clock boomed out ten strokes.

He found Hannah and Yvonne sitting in the private 
parlour, sewing. Hannah was neatly darning a hole in a stocking heel and Yvonne was adding a flounce to the hem of a gown.

Benjamin told them of what he had learned and Hannah’s eyes flashed green. ‘Find Lord Ware,’ urged Hannah. ‘He will know what to do.’

The marquis proved to be gone from the inn, and so they waited anxiously for his return.

It was nearly midnight when he came back. He listened carefully to Benjamin’s story and then said, ‘You have had more success than I. But I do have a little news. I went back to the greengrocer’s and hid in a doorway opposite and watched the shop. Ashton arrived and went in. The greengrocer saw him and started shouting, ‘Murderer!’ at the top of his voice, and Ashton took to his heels and fled. I ran after him but he managed to lose me. It might mean he wanted to have a look through those papers again.’

‘So what do we do now?’ asked Hannah. ‘Shall we go to the authorities and tell them what we know?’

The marquis paced up and down. ‘There is a slim chance they may have Monsieur Grenier under lock and key. If we have them arrested, we may never find him. Let me think. Wetherby. Thin, taciturn fellow, fat wife and, ah, a daughter of marriageable age.’ He suddenly smiled. ‘We shall call on Wetherby
tomorrow
.’

‘But you forget,’ protested Hannah, ‘Petit and
Ashton
will be in residence.’

‘And what can they say or do to us? Let us confront the enemy and keep a watch on him.’

‘But you are putting Miss Grenier at risk!’