Chapter 14

 

Which Concerns the Contents of a Valise

 

Pickett entered the tall, narrow house in Curzon Street with valise in hand, and headed straight for the stairs, only to be halted halfway to the landing by Rogers, speaking in a low voice.

“Begging your pardon, sir—”

“Yes? What is it?” The significance of the butler’s hushed tones dawned, bringing to mind all manner of hideous possibilities. “Julia—Mrs. Pickett? Is she—?”

Rogers hastened to reassure him. “There is no cause for concern. The doctor left not fifteen minutes ago, so Mrs. Pickett may well be sleeping. The midwife,” he added, with a slight emphasis on this last word, “has not been sent for.”

Pickett let out a long breath. If the doctor had not stayed and the midwife had not been summoned, Julia’s confinement must not be imminent. He glanced at the staircase in the foyer and back again. “Can I go up to her?”

If Rogers saw anything unusual in the master of the house asking the butler’s permission to visit his own wife in their shared bedchamber, he gave no sign. “There is certainly no reason why you should not, although I would suggest that if you should find Mrs. Pickett asleep, you might not wish to wake her.”

“No, of course not,” Pickett agreed, then continued up the stairs to the floor above.

Once outside the bedroom door, however, he hesitated. No sounds issued from within, but then, they wouldn’t if she were alone in the room, sleeping or not. He turned the knob carefully and noiselessly, and pushed the door open just far enough to peer inside.

The fire had been burning long enough that the room was quite warm. None of the candles were lit, however, and the curtains were closed, casting the room into shadow. The bed curtains had not been closed, however, and the fire offered just enough illumination for him to make out Julia’s recumbent figure beneath the counterpane. Her back was turned to him and her hair was unbound. The light from the fire glinted off the steel hairpins on the bedside table, and limned her hair in gold.

Something twisted deep inside him at the sight of her. What had he ever done to deserve such a woman? Backing out of the room, he pulled the door closed.

Just before the latch caught, however, she stirred and said sleepily, “John?”

“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to waken you.”

“No, don’t go,” she protested, struggling to sit up. “I wasn’t asleep.”

He rather doubted the truth of this statement, but entered the room nevertheless. He crossed the floor to the bed and gave her his arm for support until she had settled herself comfortably with the pillows at her back.

“Thank you.” Making a moue of distaste, she added, “Sometimes I feel like a turtle stuck on its back.”

“You make the prettiest turtle I’ve ever seen,” he said, then kissed her warmly. Upon the completion of this mutually satisfactory exercise, her gaze fell to the bag he’d set down beside the bed in order to attend to more pressing matters.

“Is that your father’s valise?”

“Yes. I think it may be the match for that key we found among his things. But Rogers says the doctor has been here,” he said, dismissing the valise out of hand.

“Yes, but you need not look like that,” she assured him, tracing one finger along the furrow in his brow. “It’s only that my back has ached ever since I woke up this morning, and since both Emily and Claudia have mentioned backaches as a sign that the end is in sight, I thought perhaps I should at least notify Dr. Gilroy. You’ll be pleased to know that he says everything is exactly as it should be at this point.”

Pickett hardly heard the latter half of this speech, so concerned was he with the former. “You said nothing about it this morning.”

She regarded him in some bewilderment. “No, for the doctor hadn’t yet been here. Oh, I see. You mean about my back aching. No, I didn’t mention it. In fact, there are many aches and pains I never mention, for if I did, I should be the most tiresome creature imaginable!”

“I’m glad to know there’s no reason to be concerned, although I’m sorry it’s been so uncomfortable for you.” He frowned thoughtfully. There are many aches and pains I never mention… And this was in addition to the worst bit, which was yet to come. Did he have the right—did any man have the right—to ask such a thing of the woman he loved?

The silence stretched between them until at last Julia took his arm and drew him down to sit on the edge of the bed. “Such a fierce expression! Darling, what can you be thinking?”

“Julia,” Pickett said slowly, struggling for words, “if you should find all this too much—too painful, I mean, or too distasteful—I wouldn’t want—you have only to—”

This speech was perhaps mercifully cut short when Kit, finding the door open, came bounding in. “Why didn’t you tell me you were back?” He broke off, eyes widening at the sight of the valise on the floor at his brother’s feet. “What’s that?”

“It’s Da’s valise,” Pickett said, bending over to grasp its handle. “Would you like to see what’s inside? Let’s take it downstairs, so we won’t bother Julia.”

“Oh no, you don’t!” As he stood up, Julia grabbed his coattails to detain him. “If you think to leave me lying here in bed while you two have all the fun, you will very soon learn your mistake! Only give me a moment to move over and make room, and you can put the valise here on the bed.”

In fact, it took more than a moment, but eventually Julia succeeded in settling herself far enough from the edge of the bed that the valise could be placed beside her.

In the meantime, Pickett fetched the small paper parcel containing everything his father had carried on his person at the time of his death, including the small brass key which Pickett strongly suspected would open the lock on the valise. As he unfolded the thick brown paper, he remembered another item amongst his father’s effects, and a task left undone. He withdrew his father’s watch from its wrappings, and turned to address his young half-brother with a constraint in his manner that had not marked their interactions since very early in their acquaintance.

“Kit, Da wanted you to have this.” He offered the timepiece to the boy, who snatched it up eagerly. “I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have taken it from you. I’m afraid it’s been broken since he first gave it to you, probably during the attack that killed him. I’ll take it to a watchmaker and have it repaired, if you like.”

Kit looked down at the watch, its hands still reading seven or eight minutes to twelve beneath the cracked glass covering its face. “D’you mean”—his gaze shifted from the face of the watch to that of his brother—“that it’s showing the very same time that Da was killed?”

“We can’t know for certain, but I think it’s very possible.”

Kit set his jaw in the manner of one who, having reached a difficult decision, is determined to see it through. “In that case, I think we should leave it as it is, at least until after the trial is over. It might be important.”

“You seem very certain that someone will eventually be brought to trial,” Pickett said, regarding him with a quizzical little smile.

“I am certain,” the boy insisted, then spoiled this vote of confidence by adding, “but if they’re not, then I’ll expect you to give me my money back.”

“That’ll show me,” said Pickett, chastened. “Mind you, these things take time.”

“I know that,” Kit said scornfully, then rooted through the items in the parcel until he found the key. “Is this the key to Da’s valise?” he asked, holding it up for his brother’s inspection.

“I think it might be. Would you like to try it?”

Kit’s face lit up. “Y’mean you’ll let me open it?”

Pickett shrugged. “He was your father, too.”

Kit, nothing loth, tried the key, and gave a shout of triumph when it turned easily in the lock. A moment later he had flung the valise open, only to be crestfallen upon discovering its scanty contents.

“There’s hardly anything in it!”

“No, for I let Da’s friend Sully—Sullivan Bradley, that is—have most of Da’s clothes.”

“Y’mean you’ve already opened it?” Kit demanded indignantly.

“Well, yes,” Pickett confessed, taken aback by his apparent breach of the brotherly code of honor. “I thought he might recognize anything of significance that I might miss.” He gave a bitter little laugh. “And did he ever.”

“And who, pray, was the accommodating female who provided the hairpin for this little exercise in lock-picking?” Julia asked in dulcet tones that warned him to supply the lady’s name at his peril.

He grinned appreciatively at her. “No hairpin this time, just a cravat pin. Pinchbeck, with a red stone of colored glass, unless I miss my guess,” he added. “Who’d have guessed Da would take up with the dandy set?”

“Then why’d you give Da’s clothes to that Sully fellow?” Kit demanded, understanding just enough of this speech to fuel his indignation. “You could’ve given them to me!”

“Don’t you think they would be a bit large for you?”

The answer to this question was self-evident, for even as he spoke, Kit removed the remaining shirt from the valise and tugged it over his head. The waistcoat followed, and soon the boy was peacocking before the mirror of Julia’s dressing-table. Kit was tall for his age, much as his half-brother had been, but the sleeves of his father’s shirt completely swallowed his hands, and its hem swept the floor.

“By the time you’re tall enough for them, they would be quite out of fashion,” Julia put in, attempting to pour oil over troubled waters.

They were hardly the height of fashion now, but Pickett knew better than to point out this home truth.

“Then John could wear them himself.” Kit turned to his brother. “You don’t care about stuff like that.”

“Maybe not, but your sister-in-law does. Although”—over Kit’s head, Pickett’s eyes met Julia’s with a hint of mischief in their brown depths—“I do miss my old brown coat.”

Since the coat he was wearing at that moment was a duplicate of its predecessor (albeit one of better cut and made from a superior grade of cloth, as well as being specifically tailored to his person), which he’d purchased at a secondhand clothing shop a year before he and Julia had first met, this stated preference was unexpected enough to make her eyebrows rise in dismayed inquiry. “Is this one not inconspicuous enough to serve the purpose? I know you didn’t want to dress as if you were setting yourself above your colleagues at Bow Street, but surely they would not expect you to wear a coat with a bullet hole in one shoulder and bloodstains all down the lining of one sleeve!”

“No,” Pickett said in mock sorrow. “But I could have worn it next time I call on my grandfather.”

Julia smiled at this sally, but after nine months of marriage, she had become sufficiently acquainted with his rather sly wit to have no doubt he would have done just such a thing, had the garment in question still been in his possession. She did not, therefore, challenge him on this point, but instead asked with all seriousness, “Does that mean you intend to pursue the acquaintance? I thought you wanted nothing to do with him.”

“I don’t,” Pickett said with feeling. “But he clearly intends to pursue an acquaintance with me, so I’d rather visit him occasionally on his turf than have him trying to invade mine.”

By this time, Kit had lost interest in the conversation and turned his attention back to the valise. Upon discovering the vial of dirt, he snatched it up and examined its contents, then shook it thoroughly and examined it again.

“Will you teach me how to open locks with a pin?”

“Stop shaking that thing before the stopper comes out and you spray dirt all over the bed,” Pickett said firmly, taking it from him.

“But John, is it really dirt?” Julia asked, bewildered. “Can I see?”

“Be careful with it,” he cautioned, putting it into her outstretched hand. “That’s my inheritance you’re holding—the ‘property’ Da boasted of.”

“It is rather pretty, isn’t it?” she remarked, turning the vial over in her hand.

“Is it?”

“Oh, yes! Just look at the way the tiny flecks gleam in the light. What is the land like, do you suppose?”

“I have no idea, but knowing Da, I’m not optimistic. Sully—Mr. Bradley, I should say—tells me it comes from the interior, and the land there is more or less worthless. I wonder if he knows anyone who might be interested in buying it. Under the circumstances, it seems unlikely.”

“Will you?” Kit asked again.

“Will I what?”

“Teach me how to open locks with a pin,” Kit reminded him impatiently.

“I’ll teach you when you’re older.”

This promise found no favor with his young half-brother. “I’ll bet you knew how by the time you were ten!”

“You’d lose that bet,” Pickett said. “I was twelve when Da taught me. And it wasn’t some parlor trick I performed for fun; it was something I had to do if I wanted to eat.” Seeing Kit was unmoved by this argument, he added, “Besides, I can’t answer for the consequences. Once a lady saw me open a locked door with her hairpin, and she was so impressed she grabbed me and kissed me, right then and there.”

“It wasn’t like that at all!” protested Julia, choking back her laughter. “We had to have some reason for poking about a locked room in the middle of the night! Besides, I don’t remember hearing any complaints at the time!”

“And if that wasn’t enough,” Pickett continued, unfazed, “only a few months later, she followed me to Scotland and made me marry her.”

“Yes, and look what it’s got me,” she retorted playfully. “Swollen ankles and an aching back.”

“Along with the chance to be a marchioness and mistress of a vast estate in New South Wales,” he reminded her. “You never dreamed you were making so lofty a match, did you?”

“On the contrary.” She stretched out a hand to brush a brown curl back from his forehead, and he, anticipating her next move, very obligingly brought his lips within range. “I knew I’d got a prize from the very beginning.”

“Oh, stuff!” Kit, holding no truck with displays of marital affection, returned to his exploration of the valise, and soon his attention as well as his hand alighted on the little stack of letters. “What’s this?”

Pickett was dismayed to realize that the haste in which he had repacked them in the valise, while protecting them from Sullivan Bradley’s potentially prying eyes, had left them vulnerable to Kit’s instead.

“That,” he said firmly, removing them from the boy’s grasp, “is none of your business.”

“What lovely penmanship,” Julia said, having seen her father-in-law’s sobriquet written on the outside. “Have you read them? Are they love letters?”

“I haven’t read them, and I’m not sure I want to,” Pickett told her. “Do you think I should? If Da was under any sort of, let us say, obligation to the lady, moral or financial, it might be my duty to settle matters.”

He glanced at Kit to gauge how much of the conversation the boy was taking in, and saw to his relief that his intrepid young brother had finished with the valise and returned to the brown paper parcel. Having examined the pen knife, unfolded the handkerchief, and counted the money in his father’s coin purse, he discovered a small scrap of paper. “ ‘91 Chancery Lane,’ ” he read aloud, although he pronounced the second “c” as a “k.” “That’s where all the lawyers are. Leastways, that’s what Roger said once.”

“Not all the lawyers, but a lot of them,” Pickett agreed, then added tactfully, “But I think it’s supposed to be ‘Chancery,’ not ‘Chankery.’ ”

But Kit, it seemed, had little time to waste on phonics. “You’d better go to Chankery—I mean, Chancery—Lane and see what’s at number 91.”

Pickett nodded. “I agree.” To Julia, he added, “I thought I would go first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Only if it turns out to be nothing but a bunch of fusty old lawyers, it’ll be the shabbiest trick ever!” put in Kit.

Pickett was inclined to agree. In fact, he had been more than a little afraid that Kit would beg to accompany him on a call that, however valuable the information it might yield, any ten-year-old boy would find dull. He could only be thankful that the prospect of spending the morning in an office full of fusty old lawyers was sufficient to squelch any such inclination on his brother’s part.

But as it happened, his visit to Chancery Lane proved to be anything but dull.