David was shown through a lofty hall by an equally lofty butler, and into a parlour decorated in the Egyptian style. Last month they had met at the solicitor’s office and then had tea at Rede’s club, so David had missed the glory of the previous Earl of Chirbury’s decorating style.
The room had been painted black to head height, with gold detailing. Above that was a frieze easily two feet high: Egyptian pharaohs, slaves, mummies, soldiers, and gods painted in garish colours marching endlessly around the room, with a sublime disregard for any kind of sense or story. Rede’s cousin, George, had spent lavishly, but with little taste.
The furniture carried on the theme, with blocky, claw-footed pieces upholstered or painted in reds, greens, and golds. Every surface, including a couple of ornately painted plinths, carried more Egyptian-inspired decoration: sphinxes, pharaohs’ heads, vases, mirrors in frames; even the candle sconces were sphinxes with holders embedded in their heads.
The door opened behind him, heavier steps than the butler’s.
“It’s ghastly, isn’t it?” The voice was deep and slightly husky. David’s lips turned up a little.
“Your enquiry agent, here to report, my lord,” he said.
“Don’t you try to ‘my lord’ me. I get enough of that from my sister.”
David turned, to meet his friend’s extended hand with his own. “Rede.”
Rede poured them both a drink, and they sat by the fire and talked about old friends before Rede introduced the topic of David’s enquiry on his behalf. “Have you found them?”
Three years ago in Upper Canada, the former trapper’s wife and children were murdered as part of a ruthless trade war. Rede had tracked those responsible to England, but the unexpected death of his cousin had landed the earldom and its responsibilities on his shoulders. David would complete the hunt for him.
“Not yet, Rede. I’ve made some progress, though.” If people paid their clerks more, they’d be less easy to corrupt. David thanked whatever powers there might be for the stingy behaviour of three of the traders on the list Rede had given him. “I have men placed in the offices of three of your suspects. One, I think we can clear. He toyed briefly with investing in the fur trade, but two years after the time we are interested in, and he did not proceed. I am still collecting information about the others.” The fourth employed only family, and the fifth paid well enough to have his employees’ loyalty. But three from five was not bad, and David had no doubt he’d find a way in to the other two.
“I know it seems negative, Rede, but this is the way. We eliminate those who are not guilty, until we find those who are.”
And he had added to the suspect list. “My contacts have put me onto another two possibilities, and I’m arranging to get into their households and offices, too.”
He’d also written letters to thief takers he trusted in Liverpool and Bristol, the other two big English trading ports, to start hunting there.
By the time he had finished his report, the light outside had faded into winter’s dusk. Just enough time for a quick report to Lady Georgiana before going on to meet with Talbot.
“Find them for me, David,” Rede said as he took his leave. “Find them for me so I can carry out my promise to my wife and my babies, to avenge their deaths.”
David arrived at the Admiralty steps just as Captain Talbot passed by the guard on his way out the front door.
“Sir,” he said, putting on his persona of eager disciple, “I cannot thank you enough.”
Talbot smiled expansively. “Ready for a night on the town, young Walker?”
Their first stop was, predictably, a brothel, The Dancing Dove—an expensive brothel, by the youth of the workers and the quality of the fittings, but with the same sickening smells of cheap perfume, sex, sweat, and despair as the others his work had taken him into. He allowed himself to be introduced to a statuesque redhead who was considerably older than she was made up to appear.
“Fanny, show my young friend a good time, eh?” Talbot commanded, and David followed her to one of the rooms.
He had a better use for the bed than the exercise Talbot imagined. He was beginning to feel the loss of a night’s sleep.
“Don’t bother,” he told the prostitute, as she began to unbutton her blouse. “When were the sheets last changed?”
“Maybe three days.” She looked uncertainly at the bed and back at him. “How do you want me then?”
David explained. “What I’d like you to do is sit in the chair over there and wake me in half an hour. Before we leave this room, I’ll give you double what I gave your bawd. And when we get back out there, you’ll pretend to everyone, especially my friend, that we’ve coupled.”
The prostitute frowned. “You’ll pay me. Just to sleep in the bed.”
“On the bed, but yes. Miss Fanny… or is it Miss Frances…? You’re very desirable, but I’m very, very tired, and I’d rather nobody knew…”
She nodded. “It’s Dorothea, really. But Old Hatchet-Face, who owns the place, she said that was not a good name for a whore.”
“Do you have a way to tell the hour, Miss Dorothea?” He’d removed his coat, but he laid it on the bed and stretched out beside it. No point in putting temptation in the woman’s way. He’d wake in an instant if she approached the bed to check his pockets.
She nodded. “I can hear the clock tower down the street. It chimes the quarters. It’ll be just on the half I wake you.”
“Good. Thank you.” His nose wrinkled, but he’d slept in places more rank. Willing his body to relax, he closed his eyes, and Mist was suddenly there stretched beside him. No. He was here to sleep, not to fantasise about the only woman he desired.
“Mister? Mr. Walker?” He woke to the woman’s whisper. “It’s been half an hour.”
Yes. The half was still chiming. Half an hour was not enough, but it took the edge off his weariness. He’d cope.
In the main sitting area, Dorothea poured him a glass of wine and perched on the arm of his chair, leaning against him while he waited for Talbot. Her silence money safely in the pocket she had tied to her waist under her skirt, she had obviously decided to throw herself fully into her part.
Talbot arrived some minutes later, buttoning his breeches. His companion was smiling admiringly up at him, but David caught the contemptuous grimace she passed to her companions behind Talbot’s back.
“That’s the ticket,” Talbot said to David, grinning at the way Dorothea was draped over him. “Can’t get enough of you here, can they? They should pay us for servicing them. Hah! That’s a good one. They should pay us, eh?” And he slapped the bottom of his companion with expansive glee.
“You want another round, Walker? Or what about an exotic dance? I know a place where the girls…” he gestured expansively, shaping improbably curvaceous shapes in the air.
“That sounds very exciting, Sir,” David said, back to being suitably grateful. “Is it a place we could get something to eat, Sir? All that exercise…”
“Good lad. Worked up an appetite, eh? Oh, to be young again. Come on, then, lad. The night is young. We’ll stop at a coffee house and then go on to Sultan’s Palace.”
David saluted Dorothea with a kiss on the cheek and received a warm smile in return. “Best half hour I ever spent in this place,” she told him loudly, “and that’s the truth.”
Talbot grinned broadly. “What did I say? Hey, Mrs. Hatcher, you should pay him. That’s what I say. You should pay my young friend here.” Laughing, he led the way out of the brothel. Half a dozen tired women followed David with their eyes as he left in Talbot’s wake.
As David had hoped, the coffee house was quiet enough for them to talk—or rather for Talbot to do so, while David stuck to the bare facts of his own fictional biography. Talbot was a disappointed man. “Forty years at sea, man and boy,” he told David. “Sail a desk now. Well, a man has to serve king and country where he can.” A slow-healing injury had beached him after a series of accidents to ships that were, according to Talbot, all the fault of other people. His own record, naval budget cuts, and his age ensured he’d never captain a ship again.
“There’s worse berths than London, Walker. I can show you a good time, you’ll see.”
“Captain Talbot.”
The speaker was a thin man with a desiccated voice. His cheeks, too, looked as if all the moisture had been sucked out of them over a long and disappointing life. He could, David thought, model for a painting of an anchorite: one of those medieval saints who locked himself away from the joys of the world to practise painful penances and take mournful satisfaction from his own holiness, compared to the follies of others.
Talbot welcomed him with characteristic enthusiasm. “Baron Hurley. Take a seat, man. You’re not with our lovely Lily tonight, eh?”
“I was there last night,” Hurley said.
Talbot interpreted this the way Hurley no doubt intended. “You lucky dog! She hasn’t favoured me so these three weeks. He’s a lucky dog, Walker, eh?” He waved Hurley to a chair and introduced David.
“I’m showing young Walker the sights of London. The wicked ones, eh? Milford’s nephew, you know.”
Hurley raised one thin brow. “Not an office that could be safely left to Milford, indeed.”
Talbot greeted this with a bark of laughter. “Left to Milford, eh? That’s a good one. That’s a good one, young Walker. Hey, why don’t we take Walker to see Lily?”
Hurley did not look pleased at the idea, but Talbot had the wind in his sails. “Yes, that’s what we’ll do. Lily likes the young ones. She’ll be pleased to meet young Walker.”
“I should mention,” Hurley said, repressively, “that I am considering making Miss Diamond an offer.”
That distracted Talbot from his course. “An offer? Well I knew you were a warm man, Hurley. She’ll cost you a pretty penny, will Lily.”
David thought the opportunity was too good to miss. “Excuse me, but surely you are not talking about…” he lowered his voice to a reverent near-whisper, “the beautiful Miss Lily Diamond?”
“That’s right, lad. You’ve heard of her, have you? They talk about her in York, eh?”
“I should say so! The Lily of London. The Diamond of Delight. You actually know her?” He looked from one man to the other, vacuous admiration concealing the stray thought that Miss Diamond’s job was harder than Dorothea’s, since she, presumably, had to appear pleased for longer periods of time.
Admiration and flattery laid on with a trowel worked on Talbot, and even thawed Hurley enough that he agreed to allow David to tag along on a visit to Miss Diamond’s house.
“Mind you,” Hurley warned, “she might not receive us. Tonight is not one of her receiving nights.”
“It will depend on whether she has someone else in her bed, I expect, eh?” said Talbot cheerfully, winning a black look from Hurley.
David smiled dutifully when Talbot made another crude joke, but most of his attention was on Mist. In less than quarter of an hour, he would be in her presence.