After we left the Black Swan, I expected Jeremy to drop me in front of the house and refuse to come inside, having no desire to see Colin, but on this count, he surprised me. When Davis opened the door for us, Jeremy immediately inquired as to whether his master was home, and when the butler answered in the affirmative, demanded to see him at once. Davis’s face remained as impassive as ever. He murmured, “Of course, your grace,” and went to fetch him. I all but dragged my friend into the library, pressed a glass of whisky into his hand, and insisted that he take a seat, half-afraid of what he was planning to say to my husband. Colin appeared in short order, looking rather bemused. I wondered what Davis had told him.
“Forced you to let her drive, did she?” he asked, pouring some whisky for himself. “I could have warned you it would be a bad idea.”
“Look, Hargreaves, I didn’t let her drive,” Jeremy said, “but when you hear what I did do, you’ll be furious, so you might as well throttle me and get it over with.”
My husband looked at me, raised his eyebrows, and sat across from Jeremy. “Now I’m curious.”
“It was nothing, really,” I said. “I wanted to interview the women at the Black Swan and Jeremy was kind enough to take me there in his motorcar. Naturally, he exhibited a great deal of reluctance when I proposed the excursion, but I assured him you would prefer that I undertake the errand in the presence of a gentleman rather than on my own. And as you were not available to escort me…”
Colin rose to his feet without a word, crossed to the table on which the whisky stood, picked up the decanter, carried it back toward his chair, and refilled Jeremy’s glass. “Bainbridge, I am all too familiar with the futility of trying to dissuade my wife from any of her outrageous schemes. I shouldn’t dream of holding you accountable.”
“The place is a scandal, Hargreaves, worse than I could have imagined. The women are all but slaves. Something must be done.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Colin said. “And I give you my word that when the rest of this business is sorted, I shall personally see to it that it is taken care of.”
“I’m much obliged. And I suppose I should be off.”
“No, stay,” my husband said. “You’ve proven yourself useful in the past and I may need to call on you again. You may as well know what we’re dealing with.” He gave a brief summary of the events of the previous days, including the contents of the messages that made up what we now considered some sort of diabolical scavenger hunt. The potential threat to the king made it no longer possible to keep this a secret from anyone who might help. Jeremy looked more alert than I’d seen him in years as he listened, nodding occasionally.
“What can it mean, other than to suggest that someone wants to do the same to Bertie?” Jeremy said. “Or King Edward, I should say. I’ll never get used to that.”
“I don’t agree with your hypothesis,” I said. “I did initially, but upon further reflection am convinced the last clue flies in the face of our theory. The writer, through Shakespeare’s words, shows us the king stopping his enemies, not being broken by them. And remember that the late queen said the first note was meant as an instruction.”
“Yes,” Colin said, “but she did not write it herself and may only have been passing on what someone else had given to her. She trusted that I would be able to understand the message and act upon it.”
“Hargreaves is right,” Jeremy said. “This is a strongly worded threat. How else could we interpret it?”
“I’d say it’s more like a message of hope,” I said. “The king is safe and strong, even when threatened by traitors.”
“And what about that awful sketch on the one you found in the Tower?” Jeremy asked. “What’s it meant to be? A lump of some sort?”
“A rock, I believe. I thought it might be the Stone of Scone, but an embarrassingly thorough search of Westminster Abbey proved me wrong on that count. I found no envelope there. I’ve several other possibilities to investigate.” He pressed his lips together. “When I spoke to His Majesty this morning, he expressed the gravest concerns about the entire situation. Scotland Yard are on full alert and shall do their best to prevent any further murders.”
Scotland Yard on alert! Well, if I were a murderer, I’d hardly be quaking in my boots. I doubted very much that the wretched Inspector Gale could prevent much of anything. Prudence, however, cautioned me to keep this opinion to myself. “Richard II and Harold Godwinson are the two other costumes ordered by Mr. Smith,” I said. “Richard’s was far more lavish, fitting for a king who was so obsessed by fashion. Harold died in battle, so Mr. Carson suggested a suit of armor.”
“No one was wearing plate armor at Hastings,” Colin said. “A mail hauberk would be more appropriate.”
“I don’t think our killer is concerned with strict historical accuracy,” I said. “He merely wants a visual that will convey the correct information. Any English person, faced with what looks like a slain king with an arrow stuck in his eye would immediately think of poor Harold at Hastings, regardless of his armor.”
“Even I know that much,” Jeremy said, “although I’m certain I slept through all of history at school.”
“At any rate,” I continued, “Mr. Carson’s customer did not buy plate armor. It would have cost a fortune. Instead, you’ll be pleased to know, he got a long shirt that looked something like mail, a surcoat with the cross of St. George on it—”
“The English did not use that in battle until—”
“Now is not the time for a history lesson,” I said, wondering how I had never before noticed how well-versed in medieval warfare my husband was. “He also had a helmet with a crown attached. Now, who do we think our killer will go after first? Richard or Harold?”
“Harold would be first chronologically, but given that he staged Henry VI before Edward II, we’ve no reason to expect he’s following a linear timeline,” Colin said.
“Harold’s death is much more dramatic,” Jeremy said. “Didn’t poor Richard starve to death in prison at some far-flung castle? How would one even stage that? Completely devoid of visual impact.”
“He wouldn’t be able to actually starve his victim,” I said. “Unless … Colin, can you ask Scotland Yard to check missing person reports? It’s possible that we could intervene before the unfortunate individual is dead.”
“It’s unlikely, but worth a look,” Colin said.
“Thinking on it, I’d do Richard last,” Jeremy said. “Yes, the death itself might not look dramatic, but imagine that portrait of Richard in Westminster Abbey—the one where he’s sitting on the Coronation Chair. If someone managed to bring a dead man, dressed like a king, ermine robes and all, into the Abbey, and left him on that chair … that, my friends, would be a scene worth seeing.”
“And a clear threat to King Edward,” Colin said.
I sighed. “Yes, I see the wisdom in your thinking. So, what do we do?”
“You, Emily, should continue to look for something that connects our two victims,” Colin said. “If our murderer is selecting his targets at random, it will make things far more difficult for us.”
“I don’t believe he is,” I said. No, I was convinced that his victims were carefully chosen, and although I could see how one might interpret Colin’s messages as threats against the king, I wasn’t wholly convinced. Blame my intuition, perhaps, but I felt certain we were missing something of critical importance.
“Find me something that proves a connection,” Colin said, his face grim. Then he turned to Jeremy. “And you, Bainbridge, help her however you can. I’m afraid I’ll be at Marlborough House most of the time, but you can reach me there should the need arise. Let me make myself very clear about one thing: whatever you do, under no circumstances are you to teach her to drive that motorcar.”
* * *
I made no comment on Colin’s directive to Jeremy. My poor husband felt harassed enough between the murders and trying to keep the king safe, and the irony of the situation was not lost on me. Colin and Bertie had never got along. It would be near impossible to find two men more different. Where Colin was honorable and dignified, the perfect English gentleman, Bertie had been profligate and reckless. I had heard story after story of his scandalous behavior. His stable of mistresses included some of England’s most noble women as well as some far more notorious. Rumor said he had forced his wife to attend the performance of one of his lovers in Paris. I believe she was a singer of some sort. But his crimes—if I may call them that—were not limited to the ladies. Bertie’s friends were not safe from his excesses. Once, he had poured a bottle of brandy over the head of one of his closest mates while the man chanted, “As Your Royal Highness pleases.” His own mother railed against his bad character, even going so far as to keep him from participating in matters of state when he was Prince of Wales.
I could not help but wonder, though, how much of this resulted from a chicken and egg sort of situation. There was no doubt that his mother had blamed him—at least initially—for his father’s death. There was some dalliance with a girl in Oxford, and the Prince Consort had marched off to the scene to lecture his wayward son. His stern words, delivered outside in a cold rain, led Albert to catch a chill that brought on the fever that took his life. My mother insisted that the queen never forgave Bertie.
For a man whose sole purpose in life was to be king, it had to be difficult having spent decade after decade after decade doing next to nothing. Cut out of most official business, what was the Prince of Wales to do? A stronger man might have focused on his education, charitable works, or something of equal merit and value, but that was not Bertie’s way. Edward the Caresser, as one of our always-creative papers referred to him, had other interests.
Yet, one could not claim him to be all bad. By all accounts, he was kind to his mistresses, even after he had left them, and his loyalty was lauded by all who knew him. Betray him, though, and his wrath could be brutal. It was almost as if he were two different people—one affable and charismatic, the other vindictive and unforgiving.
Not the sort of man my husband would befriend. His role as agent of the Crown put him in a difficult position, working for and protecting a man he did not respect. He would never reveal to the king even a hint of his private feelings, but that would take a toll. He would defend crown and country at any cost. I could only hope the cost would not be too high. And one never knew; after the case at hand was put to bed, the king might no longer require Colin’s services. Would he, after all, want to keep on one of his mother’s favorites?
After Colin left us to return to Marlborough House, I asked Jeremy to take me back to the East End. Not to the Black Swan, but to the place between St. Clement Danes and Holy Trinity in Lincoln’s Inn Fields so that we might inquire about Lizzie Hopman and her mother.
St. Clement’s was a gorgeous confection of Sir Christopher Wren’s, and Lincoln’s Inn had once been a fashionable place, home to the wealthy and powerful. The latter is now the site of the offices of many respectable solicitors and barristers, but the broader area between Holy Trinity and St. Clement’s housed some of London’s most destitute citizens. I had thought that I might find something out about Lizzie’s mother in either of the churches—she might, after all, have been a parishioner—but neither vicar knew her, nor had any record of her death.
Jeremy, who had once again paid a motley-looking boy to keep an eye on his motorcar, kept a tight grip on my arm as we knocked on door after door, looking for anyone who knew the Hopmans. The slum, depressing and dank, was as awful a place as I’d ever been. Ramshackle buildings in a state of appalling disrepair housed scores more people than they could comfortably hold. Most families could only afford a single room, and even that rent was often too steep for them to afford. It took hours before we came across an elderly woman, Mrs. Bagstock, living in a ground-floor room in a dark and dingy building on Clare Street, who identified herself—her tone rife with irony—as Lizzie’s governess.
“The girl needed some education, you see,” she said. “Her mother did her best, God rest her soul, but she had nothing, did she? What was she to do? Couldn’t find honest work, so did what the desperate among us must. Took in whatever piecework she could—putting together matchboxes, making flowers to decorate the grand gowns and hats your sort of lady wears—but it was never enough even to pay the rent. So she turned to the only other job she could. She left Lizzie with me whenever she was out. Bright little thing, that one. I taught her how to read and thought she might be able to make a go at finding a place in service. But fancy folks like you don’t hire girls who can’t provide a character, do you?”
“I cannot argue with your tone of judgment,” I said. “It is a scandal what happens to the young people of these neighborhoods. Something must be done to give them better opportunities.”
“Lizzie tried, you know. She had grand friends. Well, not grand perhaps, but the little Atherton girl, whose parents owned a shop … oh, I can’t remember where it was exactly … she was a clever one, quiet and studious. She and Lizzie were thick as thieves. You couldn’t keep them apart.”
“Did they remain friends?” I asked.
“What do you think, madam? A shopkeeper’s daughter and a common whore?”
The coarseness of her language shocked me, as I suspect she intended. I felt Jeremy tense next to me. “My understanding is that Lizzie had no choice in her profession. I’ve been told her mother forced her into it,” I said.
A look of profound sadness clouded Mrs. Bagstock’s wrinkled face. “Her mother had many debts and no way to pay them but one. When she got sick … what else could Lizzie do? See her mother thrown out of her home?”
“Where did she live?” Jeremy asked.
“Right upstairs. Most of her colleagues, if you can call them that, lived at the Black Swan, but she had Lizzie, so she had to have a place of her own, didn’t she? She died on the settee the two of you are sitting on now. Couldn’t take care of herself anymore, so I took her in. Horrible, her last days was. Horrible.”
I looked around the squalid little room, despairing at the thought of the poor woman having so little comfort in her final days, and tried not to shudder at finding myself sitting on the very spot where she had died. “Did you see Lizzie after that?” I asked.
“No. She never came back here again. Hated the place, I think, and hated me, because I reminded her of the time when she thought she could have a better life.” The old woman crossed to a battered cupboard that hung from the wall and opened the door. She pulled out a book and handed it to me. “This was my Lizzie’s. Her favorite book. Don’t know where she got it, but I can’t help thinking it poisoned her a bit, making her believe things could be better than they were. Still, I wouldn’t have wanted to take any bit of hope away from her. Most of the time that’s all we have here.”
I recognized the volume, John Law’s In Darkest London (rumors said John Law was the pseudonym for a lady writer of radical background; I wish I could confirm this). It told the story of a captain in the Salvation Army and his work in London’s East End. I opened the cover and saw written in a girlish hand This book belongs to Elizabeth Anne Hopman, who someday won’t live in the East End. Tears smarted in my eyes.
Jeremy cleared his throat. “Mrs. Bagstock, I am dreadfully sorry to have to ask this question, as I fear it may bring you pain, but have you had any recent news of Lizzie?”
“No, sir, I have not. Why, have you heard something?”
He crossed to her, and crouched down next to the rocking chair in which she sat. “I’m afraid she has passed away, Mrs. Bagstock.”
“Oh, dear, how very sad. Are you quite sure? I don’t believe she was ill?”
“She wasn’t. The man she was working for…” His voice cracked and trailed.
“Say no more, your grace,” Mrs. Bagstock said. “I always knew that Casby fellow was trouble. Have the police got him at least?”
“He was found murdered yesterday.”
“He deserved no better,” she said. “So why have you two really come here? Not only to bring me this sad news.”
“We are seeking justice,” I said. “Justice for Lizzie. The more we know about her, the more likely we can achieve it.”
Mrs. Bagstock shook her head. “I’ll tell you anything you’d like, but you should know that in these parts, there’s no such thing as justice.”