5

In Which John Pickett Discovers

You Can’t Go Home Again

Since there was clearly no more help to be had from that quarter, Pickett was left with the challenge of exactly where he was to sleep when his house was inhabited by strangers and he possessed not so much as a farthing with which to hire a room for the night. Aside from his wife and his half-brother, he had no other family beyond a father in Botany Bay and a nominal “stepmother” who had driven him from the house the very same day his father was transported. It was unlikely that any assistance would be forthcoming from so dubious a source, even if he could swallow his pride enough to ask for it.

In the absence of any blood relations, what other connections might he have to whom he could apply for help? The obvious choice was, of course, his magistrate—his former magistrate—Mr. Colquhoun. And yet something Harry Carson had said made him reluctant to seek out this usually reliable source—afraid, perhaps, of what he might discover. Failing Mr. Colquhoun, his former landlady, Mrs. Catchpole, might extend him sufficient credit as to allow him the use of the flat above her shop, just for the one night. Provided it was unoccupied, of course, which was by no means a given.

There was only one way to find out. He set out for Drury Lane, and soon came to the chandler’s shop whose upper story housed the small furnished flat that had been his home for five years. The shop, he knew, would be closed at this hour, so he knocked on the door with sufficient force that Mrs. Catchpole would be able to hear him from her own lodgings in the rear of the building. No one answered. He knocked again, rattling the latch this time for good measure. Still no answer.

Exceedingly loth to give up his best hope of shelter, he groped above the door frame for the key that used to be hidden there. Mrs. Catchpole had never approved of the irregular hours his investigations had often required, but she had reluctantly made this small concession, admitting that it was better than being awakened in the middle of the night to open the door to her boarder.

There was no key. He groped once again up and down the length of the door frame, then switched hands —as if that would make a difference!—and tried again. No key was hidden there. She must have ended the practice after he had married and moved out of the flat to take up residence in Julia’s house.

“Mrs. Catchpole?” he called, hammering on the door with his fist. It was too early for her to be in bed, but he had no doubt he was interrupting her dinner. He only hoped she would hear him over the rattle of pots and pans. His stomach rumbled at the reminder that he’d had nothing to eat since nuncheon with Julia, and wondered wistfully if his former landlady might invite him to share her own repast. “Mrs. Catchpole, it’s me—John Pickett.”

From somewhere inside came the sound of heavy footsteps—Mrs. Catchpole hurrying to greet him, just as he’d anticipated.

Unfortunately, he had failed to predict the broom she clutched in her hands, swinging it to and fro like a weapon.

“Out! Out!” she commanded, as her broom made contact with his shoulder. “Shop’s closed. You want anything, you’ll have to wait ’til morning.”

“I don’t—ow!—I don’t want to buy anything,” Pickett protested, dodging the broom as it sailed past his head on its return trip, scattering straw in its wake. “I just need a place to stay for the night, and I wondered if—”

“Do I look like I’m running an inn? You want lodging, you’ll have to—”

“Mrs. Catchpole, it’s me,” he said again. “John Pickett.” He grabbed the end of the broom on its next pass, putting an end to the attack and forcing his former landlady to look at him, really look at him, for the first time since she’d opened the door. “Don’t you remember me? I used to live in the flat upstairs.” Although he had been very careful to keep his name out of the events that had followed his vacating the flat, he decided that, at the moment, he could use any bit of leverage he could get. And so he added, “I’m the one who discovered the cache of coins under the floor.”

This, it appeared, had the desired effect. Her grip on the broom relaxed, and if Pickett had not been holding the business end, it would no doubt have fallen to the floor. “That was you, was it?”

“Yes!” Pickett cried with a sense of relief bordering on euphoria. “That was me! Surely new clothes and a haircut haven’t changed me as much as all that!”

To his utter astonishment, Mrs. Catchpole snatched the broom out of his grasp and set to with a will. “Have you no shame?”—Whack!—“That you could leave in the middle of the night with two months’ rent in arrears—” Whack!

“What? I never—”

“—And here you show up all tricked out in your fine new clothes, when there’s my floor upstairs all torn out”—Whack!—“and Lord Lessing what owns this building demanding that I pay for the repairs from my own pocket—” Whack!

Pickett flung up one arm in a futile attempt to stave off the attack long enough to make the woman see reason. “Mrs. Catchpole, that wasn’t—I wouldn’t—”

“—Besides giving him back a buried treasure that I don’t have and never did”—Whack!—“and saying he’ll see me ruined if I don’t hand it over—”

Pickett, deciding discretion was indeed the better part of valor, abandoned all attempts at self-defense, and took to his heels. He fled the shop with his irate landlady and her broom in hot pursuit. Once outside, he collapsed against the door while he contemplated this fresh disaster. Mrs. Catchpole, ruined? Why, she was the canniest businesswoman he’d ever known, deriving a modest but steady living for more than twenty years after the death of her husband had forced her to run the shop on her own. What had happened here? He had been obliged to return the treasure to Lord Lessing—although it had gone sorely against the grain with him to do so, it had belonged to the man by law—but not before coercing his lordship into granting Mrs. Catchpole the use of the property rent-free for the rest of her life. It seemed Lord Lessing had gone back on his word.

But no, Pickett recalled, his thinking growing clearer as his heavy breathing returned to normal, she had said the floor of the upstairs flat was completely ripped out. He had taken up only the one board, and he’d put it back in place after removing the cache of silver that had been concealed in the cavity beneath. If, as the apple woman claimed, he had never been born, then it appeared someone else had discovered the treasure—someone who had been so hopeful of discovering more that he’d all but destroyed the flat in the process. And then what? The fellow had decamped, apparently, in the middle of the night, saying nothing to Mrs. Catchpole of his discovery nor even paying the rent he owed...

If she thought him capable of such a betrayal, it was no wonder she’d beaten him about the head with a broom. He’d be tempted to beat such a fellow himself.

One thing was certain: He could not look to Mrs. Catchpole for lodgings, even if the flat were still habitable. Where else, then, might he turn? He cast his mind back still further, to the days before he had taken up residence under Mrs. Catchpole’s roof. He’d spent five years working for a coal merchant, and although the work was grueling and dirty, it had come with a tiny bedchamber in the basement of Mr. Granger’s house and a place at his servants’ board. Pickett had seen Elias Granger only once in the years since then, but his old employer had seemed pleased at his visit. Granted, there was quite a difference between giving a former apprentice tea and agreeing to house him for the night; still, the hour was growing late, and Pickett’s options were shrinking. And so he turned his steps toward Cecil Street and, upon reaching the collier’s house, knocked wearily on the door.

As soon as the butler opened it, Pickett knew something was wrong, although he could not have said how he knew. To be sure, his first impression was one of prosperity: The interior of the house smelled of sawdust and fresh paint, and beyond the foyer, he could see glimpses of paint-spattered sheets swathing the drawing room furnishings. Nearer at hand, the crystal prisms of what appeared to be a large chandelier lay in a sparkling heap on the floor, partially protected by the tall wooden stepladder which had been positioned over it, and which would, presumably, soon be employed by the builder who would affix it to the ceiling. It appeared that some sort of improvements to the house were being made, but this, surely must be a good thing—mustn’t it?

“Yes, sir?” prompted the butler, awaiting some indication as to the reason for the visitor’s presence. The man did not seem to recognize him, but Pickett decided to let this slight pass; Mr. Granger’s servants had been singularly unimpressed with the young thief whom their employer had taken on as a favor to an old friend, so it was quite possible that the butler was feigning ignorance out of spite.

“Oh, er, I beg your pardon. I should like to see Mr. Granger, if it isn’t too late.” As he recalled, the coal merchant still kept the early hours he had established in his younger days, when he had first begun to amass his fortune.

“I’m afraid it is, sir. About seven years too late, in fact.”

“Oh?” Pickett asked warily, feeling once again the now-familiar prickling at the back of his neck.

“Mr. Granger died seven years ago.”

“But—but that’s impossible! I don’t believe it!” In fact, Pickett had good reason for his skepticism, having seen and spoken to the supposedly deceased Mr. Granger a scant six months earlier.

The butler shrugged. “You may believe or not, it’s nothing to me. Your disbelief won’t make it any less true, however.” Finding the caller at a loss, the butler took pity on him. “Mrs. Lumpkin is here, if you should wish to see her instead.”

“Mrs.—Lumpkin, you say?” echoed Pickett, taken aback by the introduction into the conversation of a name he’d never heard in his life.

“Mr. Granger’s married daughter. Miss Sophy, as was.”

“Sophy—you mean Lady Gerald Broadbridge, surely?”

The butler’s brow puckered. “I’m not quite sure how you should know about that—not many people do, out-side the families themselves. It’s true that there was once some talk of a match between Miss Sophy and Lord Gerald, but all that came to an end when it was discovered that”—his voice lowered to a discreet whisper—“that Miss Sophy was in the family way.”

“Oh?” Pickett, under no illusion as to the “honor” upon which the upper classes placed so much emphasis, thought the younger son of a duke would have no scruples about debauching a not-entirely-innocent daughter of the rising industrial class, much less one who had no doubt been an eager participant in her own debauchment. Still, he would not have thought Lord Gerald would let Sophy’s dowry slip through his hands so easily. “And having had his way with her, Lord Gerald drew back from the betrothal?”

“There’s the thing.” By this time, the butler had apparently determined that Pickett, in spite of his ignorance of its patriarch’s passing, was sufficiently intimate with the family that he might speak freely. “It wasn’t Lord Gerald who had, er, done the deed. That honor, it seems, belonged to the footman.”

“I see,” Pickett said, remembering the many times Sophy had kept his own youthful ardor in line by threatening to favor the footman with her attentions. It seemed she had made good on the threat. Unless... “Tell me,” Pickett began thoughtfully, “do you recall an apprentice who came to live here? It would have been about ten years ago. His name was John.” His voice shook a bit on the final word. It felt strange to speak of himself as if he were someone else. It felt stranger still to speak of himself as if he no longer existed. Or, perhaps, as if he never had.

“I’m afraid you must be mistaken,” the butler said, shaking his head. “Mr. Granger would never have allowed an apprentice to live under his own roof, for fear the lad might have designs on Miss Sophy.”

“He did,” Pickett muttered under his breath. “Poor fool.”

The butler’s brow puckered. “I beg your pardon?”

“Never mind. But—Mrs. Lumpkin, you said?”

“Yes, for she married the footman. Quite a step down from Lord Gerald Broadbridge, but what else was poor Mr. Granger to do but insist the blackguard make an honest woman of her? The shame of it killed him, though. The doctor called it a heart attack. A broken heart, more like.” He shot a disapproving glance over his shoulder at the detritus of the construction trade. “And perhaps it’s just as well he didn’t live to see Miss Sophy and young Dick—I beg your pardon, I should say Mr. Lumpkin, seeing as he’s now the master—as I say, the pair of them letting the fortune poor Mr. Granger amassed by the sweat of his brow run through their hands like water, and neither of them having any more thought for the business than their boy has, for all he’s only six years old.”

Pickett made a sympathetic noise that was not entirely feigned, and the butler was recalled to his duty. “But I mustn’t keep you standing here. Did you want to see Mrs. Lumpkin, sir?”

Did he want to see Sophy? Granted, he had not enjoyed his last encounter with her, but while on that occasion she had been not at all pleased to discover that he had not worn the willow for her all these years, but had married another (and married a viscountess, at that), it was quite possible that this time she would not recognize him; after all, no one else had. One could hardly beg a room for the night from a seeming stranger—and the possibility that Sophy would be resolved not to remain strangers for long did nothing to reconcile him to the prospect.

“No, thank you,” he told the butler. “I won’t trouble Miss Granger—that is, Mrs. Lumpkin. Good night.”

With this avenue closed, there was only one thing he could do. He would find Mr. Colquhoun, and even if the magistrate did not remember him, well, Mr. Colquhoun’s kindness would not allow him to cast a man in need out into the street. At least, not the Mr. Colquhoun I know, Pickett told himself as he set out in search of the magistrate, more than half afraid of what he would find.

The hour was late enough that the magistrate should have long since left the Bow Street Public Office, but as Pickett’s present location was nearer to Bow Street than it was to Mr. Colquhoun’s residence in Mayfair, he decided to stop there first, just in case the magistrate had stayed late.

But as he reached Russel Street, it seemed to Pickett that something was out of place—or, more accurately, that something was back in place, something that had, at least in the London he knew, been absent for almost a year.

Distracted momentarily from his search for Mr. Colquhoun, Pickett followed Russel Street to its intersection with Brydges Street, and his misgivings were confirmed: There on the corner stood the massive edifice that was Drury Lane Theatre. Evidently no performance was taking place that night, for the enormous building stood silent and tranquil in the darkness.

There was only one thing about the peaceful scene to give him pause.

The Theatre Royal at Drury Lane had burned to the ground eight months ago.