Chapter 8

 

In Which John Pickett Seeks Cultural Enlightenment while Julia Receives a Caller

 

Pickett awoke the next morning to a lingering sense of nightmare that had nothing to do with the camp bed and its hard, lumpy mattress. In fact, he realized as his sleep-befogged brain swam into consciousness, he wasn’t in the camp bed at all. Suddenly all the upheavals of the last twenty-four hours came rushing back: his abduction from Covent Garden, followed by the discovery of the grandfather he’d not known had existed; the unexpected reappearance of his father, newly returned from Botany Bay; the crowded back room of a Limehouse pub, and a white cloth drawn back to reveal the still, lifeless form laid out on a table; and, finally, his own half-crazed invasion of his grandfather’s house and wild accusations of murder, based on no more solid evidence than a decades-old grudge and a collection of knives displayed in a gentleman’s study.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he rolled over with a groan, unwilling to face the memory of all he had said and done. What had he been thinking?

The answer was not far to seek. He hadn’t been thinking, not to any noticeable degree. His had been a purely visceral reaction based on shock and, perhaps, exacerbated by his ambivalence toward the man who had sired him. Anger, even rage, was easier to summon than grief for the father who had been absent from his life for more than a decade, and easier still than to admit the guilt produced by the lack of any finer feelings.

But there was another whose grief would be unmixed with any more complicated emotion. Kit would have to be told, and the prospect of this conversation filled him with dread. He dashed a hand over his eyes and forced himself to open them.

“Awake so soon?” asked a solicitous feminine voice.

There were certainly worse sights to wake up to. Julia sat beside him looking fresh and lovely, with pillows at her back and a tray across her knees. She must have been awake for some time, while he’d slept through the usual morning sounds of servants rebuilding the fire in the grate and serving the mistress of the house her breakfast.

“I’d hoped you would be able to sleep later,” she continued. “You must have been out most of the night.”

Determined to make as little of the night’s interruptions as possible, Pickett forced himself up to a sitting position and leaned over to kiss her good morning. As he bent over her, an untidy lock of brown hair fell over his forehead, and when Julia reached up a hand to brush it back, he captured the hand and kissed it too.

“I’m sorry all my coming and going disturbed you,” he said contritely. “I know you haven’t been sleeping well lately.”

“You did what you had to do,” she said firmly, then on a lighter note added, “As for my sleeping difficulties, it shouldn’t be much longer now. Every morning, I wake up thinking, ‘This could be the day!’ And every night I go to bed disappointed.”

Pickett could sympathize; she wasn’t the only one going to bed disappointed, albeit for a different (if not entirely unrelated) reason. He reminded himself that he’d had to be content with expressing his love for her in nonphysical ways long before he’d ever had cause to hope for more; he could do so again, for as long as it took. Even lying in bed with her in his arms, as he’d done the previous night—a short reprieve from the camp bed—was more than he’d ever dreamed possible only a year ago. He only hoped that, if she found childbirth too excruciating to risk a second pregnancy, she would at least allow him to sleep in the same bed, even if she didn’t want him to touch her while they were there.

“Would you like your breakfast brought up?” she asked, reaching for the bell pull. “I can ring for a second tray, if you wish.”

He shook his head, albeit with considerable regret. “Thank you, love, but I’d best not. I want to be downstairs before Kit comes down.”

“John,” she said, her tone suddenly grown serious, “if you would prefer that I be the one to break the news to him, you have only to say the word. He and I became quite close, you know, while you were at the Larches.”

He shook his head. “You’re sweet to offer, but that’s something I have to do myself.” He sighed. “Why didn’t I let him keep that blasted watch?”

“You can give it back to him after you’ve retrieved your father’s belongings,” she pointed out. “You can say with all honesty that your father wanted him to have it.”

“I suppose I’ll be responsible for disposing of all Da’s things.” He had not considered this prospect before, and now he could feel the weight of these new and unwanted responsibilities settling on his shoulders like the sacks of coal he’d hauled long ago in exchange for room and board. “Even if he made a will—which I doubt—Kit won’t be mentioned in it. Da didn’t even know he existed before yesterday, and illegitimate children have no rights under the law. Granted, Da wouldn’t have left much, but it’s the principle of the thing: I was born within the bonds of matrimony; he wasn’t. It’s a rotten deal for him, but there it is.”

“What’s a rotten deal?” asked Kit, bounding into the room at that moment, already fully dressed and breakfasted, if the smear of black currant jam on the corner of his mouth was anything to judge by. “John, d’you know where Da is? He’s not downstairs, and his bed isn’t even mussed! Has he gone out already, or did he stay out all night?”

Pickett heaved a sigh. The time, it seemed, was at hand. “Come here, Kit, and sit down.” He patted a spot on the mattress beside him.

Kit, suddenly wary, looked at his brother and sister-in-law in turn, then crawled onto the bed and sat down where Pickett had indicated.

“Something’s wrong. It’s Da, isn’t it.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Well, yes,” Pickett confessed. “Sometime after Da left yesterday, he suffered a—” A what? An accident? No one was “accidentally” stabbed in the back. The truth, he decided, would have to do. “He suffered an—an attack, of sorts, and was badly injured.”

“Is he dead?” asked Kit, never one to mince words.

Pickett took a deep breath. “Yes, I’m afraid he is.”

Kit stared into his brother’s face for a long moment, then leapt down from the bed and darted from the room. In the next instant, Pickett heard the pounding of footsteps on the stairs.

He sighed. “That went well.”

Julia put her hand over his and gave it a squeeze. “Give him time.”

In fact, Kit required even less time than she had anticipated. Only a few minutes later, the sound of footsteps on the stairs heralded his return, this time accompanied by the clink-clink of metal on porcelain. Kit entered the bedchamber a moment later, holding in his hands a hollow porcelain pig with a cork plug in place of a tail. He squirmed back onto the bed, then pulled out the cork tail with a pop! and turned the ceramic swine upside-down. A stream of copper coins poured out—chunky “cartwheel” tuppences and shiny new pennies, along with a quantity of humbler ha’pennies and farthings—all the wealth of which a ten-year-old boy was possessed, piled together in a mound that gleamed dully against the pristine fabric of the counterpane.

“This is for you,” Kit said in a rush. “I want to hire you to find out who killed Da.”

“Kit, you don’t have to—” Pickett began, then stopped. You don’t have to pay me for what I already intend to do, he’d meant to say. But to deny his young half-brother the opportunity to participate in bringing their father’s killer to justice would only serve to emphasize Kit’s inferior standing as Gentleman Jack’s “other,” son: illegitimate, his very existence unknown to their father until just yesterday, forever “less than” his elder brother. He knew enough of the Pickett pride to recognize that Kit would someday have to wrestle his own demons, once he was old enough to realize that the dubious circumstances of his birth, which never raised an eyebrow in St. Giles and its environs, were regarded very differently in the eyes of society and the law. Anything he might do now to confirm his brother’s place within the family could only ease the boy’s way later on.

And so he spread the coins and studied them for a long moment—in fact, he was tallying them up in his head and calculating the smallest amount he might take without arousing his brother’s suspicions, but Kit didn’t have to know that—then counted out coins amounting to just over half the boy’s total savings.

“I think this should be enough to go on with,” he said at last.

Kit let out a long breath, and Pickett was rather touched to realize that his brother had feared he would not have the wherewithal to retain the services of so exalted an investigator as John Pickett of Bow Street.

“And you’ll let me know how you’re doing?” asked Kit, attempting with mixed success to pour his remaining coins back into his pig’s rump.

“I’ll give you weekly progress reports,” Pickett said, briskly businesslike. “Although if at any time you have questions, you may require me to render a full accounting. Is that agreeable?”

Kit was understood to say that it was.

“Well, then,” Pickett said, scooping up his fee, “take the rest of your money back upstairs before it falls off the mattress and rolls under the bed.”

As Kit hurried off to obey this command, Pickett turned and found Julia regarding him quizzically.

“What?” he asked, all at sea.

She leaned over to kiss him. “I love you, John Pickett. You know that, don’t you?”

“I do,” he said. “But someday, after this baby is born, I shall require you to render a full accounting.”

* * *

Given that his father’s murder had taken place late at night, and the coroner summoned later still, Pickett thought it unlikely that the inquest would take place before midafternoon. Granted, Mr. Colquhoun had borne him away before this topic had been raised—not that he’d complained at the time—but Pickett thought it unlikely that the coroner had gone door to door rousing the neighborhood until he’d enlisted the requisite seven to twelve men to serve as jurors. Then, too, while the Grapes had been a convenient place for the body to be brought until other arrangements could be made, the pub’s narrow frontage precluded its having a room large enough for holding the inquest, meaning the coroner would be obliged to locate a larger public house whose proprietor would be willing to host the proceedings.

All of which meant he had a few hours’ grace in which to learn what he could about the murder weapon before surrendering it to the magistrate. And so, after he’d breakfasted downstairs with Kit, he returned to his bedchamber to brush his teeth and shave.

“Sweetheart”—his eyes met Julia’s in the mirror over the washstand—“what do you know about the British Museum?”

She had known that he meant to go out immediately after breakfast, but she had assumed he had in mind some errand connected to his father’s death, either as the son of the deceased or as an independent agent making inquiries into the murder. That he should choose this of all possible times to go on a pleasure outing left her nonplussed.

“I’ve never given it much thought,” she said, trying not to sound as bewildered as she felt. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m wondering if someone there might be able to tell me something about that knife.”

He had shown it to her as soon as they could be certain that Kit would not interrupt, and now she wrinkled her nose at the thought of the curious knife with its bloodstained blade of sharpened stone.

“I daresay they will know as much about it as anyone else.”

“There’s one problem solved, then.” Without lingering to explain, he put her gently aside and began climbing the stairs, his long legs taking them two at a time.

“John?”

Having finished his ablutions, he wiped his face with a towel and crossed the room to the clothes-press, where he stood regarding its contents for a long moment.

“Now, what’s the most suitable thing to wear to a museum?” he asked.

“Surely you don’t intend to go today!”

He turned away from his contemplation of the clothes-press and its contents. “Sweetheart, I can’t keep a valuable piece of evidence indefinitely. I’ll have to return it before the inquest.”

“Yes, but have you considered that perhaps Kit needs you?” she suggested gently.

“It’s for Kit’s sake that I have to go. Remember,” he added with a hint of a smile, “he’s paying me nine pence.”

“Very well, then,” Julia said, changing tactics, have you thought that perhaps I need you?”

This suggestion had the effect of wiping the smile from his face as his gaze fell to the bulge of her abdomen. “Are you—? Is it—?”

“Not the baby, no,” she assured him hastily. “Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I thought you might need me.”

“Always.” Abandoning, at least for the nonce, the question of dress, he strode across the room to the bed and took her in his arms, drawing her as close as their child would permit.

She leaned her head against his chest with a sigh of contentment. “I know you want to find your father’s killer, but there’s nothing wrong with taking a little time to mourn your loss first. The British Museum will still be there.”

“Very likely,” he agreed without hesitation. “But the knife won’t. I have to give it back to Mr. Colquhoun, remember?”

“I could make you a sketch of it,” she suggested. “You could take that to the museum instead.”

His arms tightened around her. He dropped a kiss onto the top of her head, but said, “It’s kind of you to offer, sweetheart. But my father went to his death believing I’d betrayed him by working for Mr. Colquhoun. If I don’t at least use the things I learned at Bow Street to bring Da’s killer to justice, then—well, I’d say he was right.”

From this stance he would not be moved. Conceding defeat, Julia made suitable suggestions as to what he might wear, then watched with an appreciative eye as he stripped off his dressing gown and nightshirt and arrayed himself in these garments. She lifted her face for his goodbye kiss, then listened for his footsteps descending the stairs and the sound of the front door opening and closing behind him.

She hoped the museum would yield the information he sought, but she suspected it was not love so much as guilt that drove him.

Obeying a sudden impulse, she threw back the counterpane and eased herself carefully out of bed, then padded in her bare feet to the elegant rosewood writing desk beneath the window. She dipped a quill in the inkwell and scrawled a few words, then folded the note, returned with it to the bed, and gave a tug to the bellpull.

* * *

“Oh, Emily, thank heaven!” Reasoning that she had defied doctor’s orders enough during the last twenty-four hours, Julia did not rise to greet her visitor, but held out her hand as if reaching for a lifeline. “I was so afraid you might have gone out!”

“Surely I wasn’t so tardy as all that!” Breezing past the butler who had just announced her, Lady Dunnington took Julia’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “I came as soon as I received your note.”

“I knew you would, if only you were at home,” Julia said warmly. “I daresay it only seems like a long time because of everything that has happened since yesterday—but never mind that! Rogers, if you will be so good as to set a chair for Lady Dunnington, I shan’t keep you any longer.”

“Very good, madam.” He picked up the nearest of the two wing chairs facing the fire and moved it to his mistress’s bedside, positioning it at an angle that would allow Julia to converse easily with anyone seated in it. “Do you wish for some refreshment? I believe there are freshly-baked fairy cakes to be had, in addition to tea or perhaps sherry.”

“Then do let’s have them, for I’m famished!” put in Emily, addressing the butler over her shoulder as she settled herself in the chair he had placed for her.

“Yes, please, Rogers,” Julia concurred, smiling at him. “We would not want poor Lady Dunnington to starve. Oh, and pray make sure some are taken upstairs to Kit, as well.”

“Begging your pardon, madam, but I believe Master Kit is in the kitchen assisting Cook with their preparation.”

“Oh, is he? In that case, let us have them at once, while there are still some to be had! The last twenty-four hours have been trying for all of us,” she said to Lady Dunnington after Rogers had gone, “and Kit has been particularly affected—”

She broke off abruptly, for Lady Dunnington was no longer listening. Instead, Emily stared off to the left in wide-eyed astonishment. Following the line of her gaze, Julia realized the object of her amazement was the camp bed that took up a great deal too much of the dressing room.

“No, no, it isn’t that,” she said, laughing. “I haven’t banished John from my bed. Did you think I had summoned you to commiserate with me after a quarrel? Nothing of the sort, I assure you. In fact, the current sleeping arrangements were not my idea, but the midwife’s. And then, only a few days later, Dr. Gilroy put me on bed rest until my confinement. I—I was bleeding a little,” she confessed in a much more serious vein.

Lady Dunnington’s astonishment turned to dismay. “Julia!”

“Not much, you understand, and only for a day or two,” she put in hastily. “But Dr. Gilroy thought it best not to take unnecessary chances. As for the camp bed, it is certainly not ideal, but better by far than requiring poor John to remove to the best guest chamber.”

“It would be useless, I suppose,” mused Lady Dunnington, “to point out that separate bedchambers are the norm rather than the exception in most noble households.”

“Indeed it would, for that was precisely the arrangement that Frederick and I had for years,” Julia agreed. “And yet, there is—at least, there was—something so very pleasant in knowing one has only to reach out one’s hand to—that is, even if it doesn’t lead to—rather, if nothing of an—an amorous nature is likely to—to—”

“Pray, say no more,” interrupted Lady Dunnington, seeing her friend foundering in a sea of connubial recollections. “We shall take it as read, then, that it was not for any reason pertaining to marital strife that you wished to see me. What was it, then? Sheer boredom, or something else entirely?”

“Something else.” Julia put a hand to her forehead in the manner of one quite overwhelmed. “Oh Emily, I scarcely know where to start! First of all, do you remember telling me a few weeks ago about Lord Melrose’s grandson?”

“Of course I do! Granted, I have no great liking for Lord Melrose, but one can’t help but pity him. It must go very hard with so proud a man, being obliged to beg the king for the privilege of seeing his titles and estates devolve upon a fellow who very likely eats with his knife. Can you imagine?”

In fact, Julia could imagine entirely too well, but she said only, “I can assure you that Lord Melrose’s grandson does not eat with his knife.”

“Oh?” Lady Dunnington’s eyebrows rose in the manner of one who scents a particularly juicy on dit. “How do you know?”

“Because he’s John.”

“I beg your pardon?” asked Lady Dunnington, all at sea.

“He’s John,” Julia repeated. “My John. He’s Lord Melrose’s grandson.”

At this revelation, Lady Dunnington’s eyebrows all but disappeared into her hairline. Her jaw dropped, giving Julia a brief glimpse of her parted lips before she pressed both hands to her mouth. A moment later her shoulders began to shake, and Julia realized with some indignation that she was laughing.

“I should like to know what you find so funny about it,” she said testily.

“I’m—sorry,” Lady Dunnington said in between gales of laughter. “It’s just that—I’m sure I wish King George many years of good health, but I can’t help thinking of someday when he is gone, and Prinny becomes king, and—and—”

She went off into another paroxysm, and Julia was obliged to wait until she regained control of her mirth before she could discover just what it was that her friend found so amusing.

“—And at the coronation, your Mr. Pickett will take precedence over Lord Fieldhurst!”

“Oh, heavens!” Far from taking offense, Julia found herself smiling at the picture conjured by Lady Dunnington’s words. “In crimson velvet and ermine, with a coronet of gold strawberry leaves. The poor darling!”

Lady Dunnington shook her head. “In general, I believe it is wise to humor a lady in the final stages of childbearing, but honesty compels me to point out that ‘poor’ is the very last word most people would choose to describe such a change in status.”

“Very likely,” Julia agreed. “But then, John is not ‘most people.’ He doesn’t want it, you see.”

“If we were speaking of anyone else, I would say he was putting on airs to be interesting, but in the case of your husband, I can readily believe it. What, pray, are his objections?”

Julia considered this question for a long moment before answering. “Quite aside from the fact that he would be completely out of his depth, he doesn’t want to be beholden to Lord Melrose in any way, for anything. Which brings me to the second upheaval of the past twenty-four hours.”

It was at that moment that Rogers returned with the tea tray, so Julia was obliged to hold her tongue while tea was poured and fairy cakes were served. Once the butler had left the two ladies alone, however, she described for Lady Dunnington the unexpected return of Gentleman Jack Pickett from Botany Bay and his disclosures regarding her husband’s parentage, followed by his violent death that very night. Lady Dunnington listened in silence, the creases in her usually smooth brow deepening with each new revelation.

“And you say all of this was the very same day that Lord Melrose made himself known to your Mr. Pickett?” she asked at the end of this recital. “Did he know about Mr. Pickett Senior—I say, may I call him Gentleman Jack? All these ‘Mr. Picketts’ are confusing.” Receiving an answer in the affirmative, she rephrased the question. “Did Lord Melrose know Gentleman Jack had returned to England, do you suppose?”

“I think he must have done.” There was no one else near enough to overhear their conversation, Julia lowered her voice nonetheless. She had not known until Lady Dunnington had swept into the room just how badly she had needed to confide in someone—someone who, unlike her husband, was not personally connected to any of the players, and therefore could not be distressed by any speculations regarding them. “John’s father and grandfather—two men who haven’t been in contact with one another for twenty-five years—turning up not only on the same day, but within a few hours of each other? It seems a very unlikely coincidence.”

“Perhaps not so much as it appears at first glance,” countered Lady Dunnington. “If Lord Melrose knew that Gentleman Jack had been given a ten-year sentence, he must have known that those ten years are now up, and that Gentleman Jack might well be returning to England.”

“Yes, but on the very same day that he had John snatched off the street and brought to him in Park Lane?”

The countess shrugged. “Why not? If Lord Melrose has kept up with his grandson’s whereabouts all these years, would it be so unusual for him to have arranged for some obliging stevedore to notify him of any ships arriving from New South Wales?” Her eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. “But that’s not what’s really troubling you, is it? What you’re really wondering is whether Lord Melrose, having learned of Gentleman Jack’s return, arranged for him to be killed.”

Julia took a deep breath. “Yes, that’s it. John hasn’t mentioned such a possibility, and I’ll admit it sounds absurd when one says it out loud, but—well, someone killed him, and barring the possibility of his merely having the misfortune to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, that someone must have had a reason.”

“And that reason is?” prompted Lady Dunnington.

“Having made up his mind to lick John into shape to succeed him, Lord Melrose might have thought he could be more easily manipulated without his father near at hand to exert an opposing influence—not that it would work, of course, for John is not so easily led.” She shook her head as if to clear it. “But this is mere conjecture on my part. Truth to tell, Emily, I’m not sufficiently well acquainted with Lord Melrose to form any opinion as to what he might or might not do.”

She could not have guessed just how soon this state of affairs was about to be remedied.

* * *

Whatever his motivation for making inquiries at the British Museum—whether love, or guilt, or some uneasy mix of the two—Pickett was fortunate in that recent changes to the policies of that establishment made it no longer necessary to apply to the porter for a ticket allowing one to return to the museum at a designated time. Instead, he was able to enter the building without any hindrance beyond the baleful looks cast down upon him by the stuffed giraffes on display at the top of the stairs. Undaunted by these silent witnesses, he mounted the stairs, but upon reaching the upper floor, he realized he had no idea of what, or whom, he was looking for. Fortunately, it was not long before a middle-aged man of scholarly mien took pity upon him.

“Pardon me, sir,” he said, approaching Pickett just as that young man had paused to stare in morbid fascination at an Egyptian mummy, resolving to introduce Kit to these exotic wonders at no very distant date. “May I be of some assistance? My name is Oliphant; I have the honor of being one of the caretakers of these wonderful objects.”

“Yes, please, Mr. Oliphant.” Pickett said, withdrawing the bulky handkerchief once more from the inside pocket of his coat. “John Pickett, of—of Curzon Street.” How long would it be, he wondered, before the impulse to say “of Bow Street” was finally banished?

But he had no time to ponder the question now. Under the curator’s interested gaze, he unfolded the handkerchief to expose the curious weapon within. “I was wondering if someone here could tell me about—this.”

“Dear me.” Mr. Oliphant leaned forward, adjusting his spectacles for a better look. “Dear me.”

“Do you know what it is?” Recognizing the idiocy of this question, Pickett hastily corrected himself. “That is, I know it’s a knife, but it’s unlike any knife I’ve ever seen before. Can you tell me anything about it? Where it may have come from, who might possess such a weapon—anything, really.”

Mr. Oliphant took the knife from Pickett, being careful to handle it only by the handkerchief enfolding it.

“As a matter of fact,” Mr. Oliphant said, straightening himself to regard Pickett with a hint of a smile, “I can. Not because of anything in the museum’s collection, you understand, but because I have a cousin who for several years held an administrative position of our colony in Port Jackson.”

Pickett’s expressive brown eyes lit with recognition. “Oh?”

The curator nodded. “That is the collective name for the penal colony of Botany Bay and its environs.” He gestured toward the knife in its cradle of white linen. “The proper name for this particular weapon is a leilira knife. The double-edged blade is struck from stone, and the handle, if one can call it that, is made of resin and painted with red ochre. It is but one example of many such knives made and used by the aboriginal tribes of that region.”

“You’re sure of this?” Pickett asked, but even as he asked the question, he knew no doubt.

“Oh, quite sure. My cousin brought back many similar curiosities when he returned to England upon his retirement.” His brow wrinkled as he studied the dried brown flakes clinging to the sharp edges of the blade. “Although since it appears that this one has been used recently, I sincerely hope it is not one of his.”

Pickett shook his head. “It was found in an alley in Limehouse.”

Of course, it had been lodged in his father’s back at the time, but he saw no reason to divulge this rather gruesome detail. Instead, he thanked Mr. Oliphant for his assistance, and returned to Curzon Street, where note from the coroner had been delivered only half an hour earlier, informing him that the inquest had been scheduled for that afternoon at three o’clock at the Chalk and Cheese in Limehouse.