She was on her feet, making for the garden door. I got there first and stood with my back to it.
‘We want to talk to you,’ I said. ‘Either that or we’re handing you straight over to the police.’
We were practically touching. I could feel her breath on my face, though her own was no more than a pale blur in the dark. Anger burned off her, clear as flame.
‘You have no right.’ Her voice was low but clear. She had the slightest of accents, but I couldn’t place it in the few words we’d spoken.
‘Anybody has a right to arrest a thief.’
I should have saved my breath because she turned and broke away, into the darkness of the garden. I went after her.
‘Amos.’ For once, he was not much use. He’d have tackled a seven-foot assassin cheerfully but the discovery that he’d felled a woman had unnerved him. A sound of swishing foliage and cracking sticks suggested that she’d charged through a flower border, the dahlias probably. I went in the same direction, tripping and sliding over grass and plants. She was setting a good pace and I thought I was losing her, until a thump, a crashing of flowerpots and a gasp of pain came from up ahead. I suppose a gardener had left a wheelbarrow of pots out because I ran into the upturned wheel of it, with pot shards crackling under foot. She was struggling up again, but with difficulty. I took her arm to help her and held on to it.
‘If we go on like this, we’re going to wake the whole house,’ I said. ‘Is that what you want?’
‘Who are you?’ Her question was less angry this time, more curious. She might be in pain, holding her free arm across her chest.
‘I’m a friend of Lady Blessington. What were you doing in her house?’
‘She shouldn’t be sheltering a traitor.’ She spoke the last word like a curse, operatically.
‘Are we talking about Lesparre?’
‘What do you know about him?’
‘I’m not going to answer any of your questions until you’ve answered some of mine.’
‘Is he still in that house?’
I wondered if we were going to spend all night deadlocked among broken flowerpots. Luckily Amos’s footsteps sounded at long last, coming along the gravel path. ‘There are the two of us,’ I said to her. ‘You can’t get away.’ She didn’t know that Amos was temporarily a broken reed and clasped her arm more tightly to her chest, probably expecting to be skittled again. ‘We’ll go back to the stables,’ I said to Amos. ‘We can talk there.’
He led the way and we followed, with me still holding the woman by her uninjured arm. Where the path was too narrow I let her go ahead and followed close behind, but she made no more attempts to escape. When we got to the stable yard Amos held the door of the hay store open and she walked calmly into the sweet-smelling darkness.
‘I’ll find some light,’ he said. ‘You all right with her?’
‘Yes,’ I said, but she answered ‘Yes’ at the same time, as if I were the threat and Amos her protection. Whatever or whoever she was, she thought quickly. He came back with a candle, lit it from the flint in his pocket and set it upright on a beam well away from the hay.
‘Did I hurt you, miss?’ He plumped up hay into a seat for her.
‘It wasn’t you, it was the wheelbarrow,’ I said, fearful that he’d dissolve into apologies when I needed him. Her face was still no more than a blur in the darkness.
A smell of sweat and the sharp tang of rosemary from stumbling over a bush was coming off her. I daresay my smell was much the same. As the light from the candle spread the first thing that struck me were her great dark eyes. Perhaps they looked even larger and deeper than they were because of the angle of the light, the pupils wide and black from being in the dark. Her cheekbones were high and sharp, black hair twisted up under the man’s cap she’d managed to keep on her head through it all, with a few damp tendrils escaping. She wore breeches, boots and a man’s riding coat. She was beautiful. Goodness knows how Tibble could have mistaken her for a lad. Perhaps, in his need for money, he’d wilfully ignored the evidence or just considered it another example of the peculiar behaviour of the quality. Amos took a bandage out of his pocket, meant for a horse but mercifully clean.
‘Let’s see that wrist, shall we, miss?’
It looked puffy. She held her arm out to him and he bandaged it with great care, making the small soothing sounds that he might to a horse. All the time she stared into my face as if trying to make a decision. I held her look and tried to give nothing away. Amos tied off the bandage and went to put her hand carefully down in her lap, then was embarrassed again because of the breeches. She sensed this and almost smiled, then was serious as a statue again. I told her my name and asked hers.
‘Eleonore.’ Just the one word, no surname. The accent was French.
‘So what are you doing here?’
‘You said the name Lesparre. Are you friends of his?’
It was more of an accusation than a question, but I noticed she put it in the present tense. I followed the example.
‘Not especially. You say he’s a traitor. Who to?’
‘The man who should be emperor of France. Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte.’ She said the name like a herald announcing a title, her great eyes intent on mine.
‘Lesparre told Lady Blessington he was with the prince and managed to escape.’
‘She’s a fool if she believed him. He’s the reason the attempt failed. He warned the garrison in advance. If it hadn’t been for him, the prince would be in Paris by now, not in prison. Some of us suspected him, even before we sailed. But the prince is too trusting, too open-hearted.’
‘So he’s a traitor. What do you want with him?’
‘To kill him. After we’ve put him on trial.’
‘We?’
‘Those of us who care about France.’
‘And if he’s guilty, who carries out the sentence?’
‘I shall, if necessary.’ This time she spoke without drama, as of a distasteful but necessary piece of work, like clearing a drain. Amos moved uneasily on his heap of hay and caught my eye. His expression asked what kind of creature it was that we’d caught and what were we going to do with it. ‘So you can tell your friend Lady Blessington what she’s got under her roof,’ she said. ‘Now, if you like.’
‘So that you can assassinate him? No, I don’t think so.’ I didn’t believe that had been her intention, not on this visit at any rate. If she’d been carrying a knife or gun she’d have probably used them on us. ‘You’ve proof he’s a traitor?’
‘Proof of my own ears and eyes. I was at Boulogne, dressed as I am now. The prince would not have allowed me to go, but I stowed away. I saw it all. We’d chosen a day when we knew that the commander of the troops at the Boulogne garrison was away. He was not sympathetic to the prince but his deputy was of our party. But somebody got word to the commander. He hurried back and found the soldiers cheering the prince, shouting Vive l’Empereur and getting ready to march on Paris. He surrounded them with his own men, threatened to fire and everything was over. The prince wanted to kill himself there and then on the field of battle but his friends persuaded him to preserve himself for another attempt. It will happen. They can’t keep the eagle in a cage.’ You could almost hear the drums and ‘La Marseillaise’.
‘You were in the garrison itself?’ I said, half envying her the adventure.
She looked down. ‘No. The prince insisted I must stay on the ship.’
‘With Lesparre?’
‘Yes. There we were, just a few of us, waiting for news. We heard the cheers for the prince from the garrison, but then the shots and the shouting. We knew something was wrong. Some of the men came running back to the ship but the French soldiers followed and arrested them. They searched the ship. By then, I had changed into women’s clothes I had brought with me, just a confused and frightened woman. They let me go.’
‘And Lesparre?’
‘He was simply allowed to walk off, through the police and soldiers and nobody made any attempt to arrest him. That was when I knew. It was Lesparre who betrayed the prince.’
‘If you’re so sure of that, why not just go to Lady Blessington and Count D’Orsay and tell them? They’re good friends of the prince.’
‘Friends in prosperity aren’t always friends in distress. You can tell them for me, see what they say.’
‘I’m certainly not going to burst in on them with this story in the middle of the night. You can come home with me and we’ll discuss it in the morning.’ I’d decided while we’d been talking. I’d no intention of letting her go but it would have been awkward to keep her by force, particularly since Amos would be no help. She nodded, looking weary. I supposed she’d keyed herself up to whatever she’d planned to do that night and was feeling the draining of energy that comes when things aren’t as straightforward as they seemed.
‘I’ll go and tack up the horses,’ Amos said.
He left the candle with us, relying on himself to saddle and bridle two horses in a strange stable in the dark. I’d have liked to help him, but didn’t trust Eleonore not to run away. She lay back on the hay, eyes closed, but I was pretty sure she wasn’t sleeping. The candle was nearly burned out when two sets of hooves sounded outside. I carried it in one hand and gave the other to her to help her over the shifting hay. Amos was holding the reins of Rancie and the big cob from his livery stables. I took the picture of the valet with me in its portfolio and managed to lash it to my saddle with a piece of string I’d found.
‘I’ll put you up first then get up in front, miss,’ he said to her, preparing to lift her up on to the cob’s back. She moved away. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be careful of your hand.’
‘You think I’m going to ride behind you?’ All of her arrogance was coming back.
‘That was the general idea,’ Amos said. Then, to me, unhappily, ‘Tell her I don’t go around knocking ladies over.’
That wasn’t the problem, as it turned out. Eleonore, in her man’s gear, flatly refused to ride pillion behind him ‘like a farm woman going to market’ as she put it. I pointed out that at about two o’clock in the morning, pitch dark, there was nobody to see, but it made no difference. She looked longingly at Rancie who, even by candlelight, showed like the thoroughbred she was, but I had no intention of letting Eleonore on her back. In the end, Amos said she could ride the cob and he’d walk leading it, so that’s what happened. The road back from Kensington to Hyde Park seemed a long way in the dark and knowing Amos was plodding so patiently and that he’d have to be at work in a few hours I could cheerfully have strangled her. Our hooves clattered along the cobblestones in Adam’s Mews and into Abel Yard as the workhouse clock was striking three. Amos helped Eleonore off the cob, then me off Rancie.
‘I’ll bed her down here, if you like. You’ll maybe be wanting to go back to Gore House first thing in the morning,’ he said. I nodded and thanked him. Just occasionally, rather than send Rancie back across the park to his livery stables, we’d make her comfortable in an empty stall next to the cow sheds at the end of the yard. I stuffed a hay net while he spread straw and filled a bucket from the pump by lamplight. Eleonore sat on the mounting block and watched. ‘Sure you’re safe alone with that one?’ he said.
‘I think so. She needs our help, so I don’t suppose she’ll knife me.’
‘Are you going to tell her he’s dead?’
‘Probably yes, when I’ve got more out of her. Of course, she may not need telling.’
‘I reckon she’s not pretending about that. She thinks he’s still alive.’
‘I wouldn’t depend on it.’
He vaulted on to the cob’s back and rode off with a cheerful, ‘Goodnight, ladies.’
Eleonore didn’t reply. I tucked the portfolio with D’Orsay’s sketch of the valet under my arm and led the way upstairs to the parlour. While I lit the lamp and coaxed the fire back to life she draped herself across an armchair, trousered legs hitched over the arm of it, and watched from half-shut eyes.
‘Madeira?’ She accepted a glass in her good hand as if doing me a favour. I swung the kettle on its trivet over the fire and settled with my own glass in the opposite armchair. I tried to guess her age. A few years older than I was, possibly even in her thirties. But then she was tired and in pain, though hiding it well. ‘So you’re a friend of Prince Louis?’ I said.
‘A friend and a soldier.’
‘Soldier?’
‘My father was an officer in the emperor’s imperial guard. Before he marched away to his last battle I swore to him that whatever happened I’d be loyal to the emperor.’
‘And that loyalty transfers to Prince Louis?’
‘The prince is a fighter for freedom everywhere, like his uncle.’ She glared at me as if Waterloo had been my fault. ‘So, have I answered the question you wanted to ask me?’
‘What question?’
‘Whether the prince and I are lovers. That’s usually what women want to know. Love, love, love.’ She sang the words sarcastically, in a fine contralto voice. Her glass was already empty. I refilled it.
‘Not this woman,’ I said (though I’d have liked to know). ‘What would you have done in Lady Blessington’s house tonight if you’d got in there.’
‘I’ve told you that – look for a traitor.’
‘What made you think he was at Gore House?’
‘We have friends in many places.’ Quite likely, I thought, and Lady Blessington’s home was, after all, one of the great gossip centres of London. Short of standing on a pedestal in Whitehall, there weren’t many worse places for a man to hide.
‘Your people had tried before, hadn’t they? There was a foreigner looking for a footman’s post. But that didn’t work so you decided to get in yourself. Seven pounds was a lot to pay. Did you get your money’s worth?’ The look of surprise on her face was gone in the blink of an eye.
‘What do you think?’
‘I think you did. You had time to go up the back stairs to the loft and unscrew that plate in the chimney. Then you had a rake around inside the chimney to clear it for the next time.’ I’d realized that she could hardly have come down the chimney and reappear to Tibble covered in soot, but simply raking around might account for the first mess in the old nursery. One detail bothered me even as I spoke: how would she have known to take up an oil can to loosen the screws?
She was staring as if I were some unlikely creature in a zoo. ‘Could you kindly tell me what you’re talking about. Are you mistaking me for a chimney sweep?’
‘You left Tibble repairing the window and went out for a look around.’
‘Yes. If it interests you, I went along the corridor and found the door to the servants’ stairs. I’d have liked to do more but there wasn’t time. And I can assure you I was not poking around in any chimneys. Soot is terribly bad for the voice.’
‘So what were you doing?’
‘Reconnoitering, of course. I wanted to know where they were hiding Lesparre and how we’d get him out. It was obvious I’d have to make another visit when there was more time.’
‘Like tonight?’
‘Like tonight.’
‘Was it you who stole the bracelet and pendant?’
‘These, you mean?’ Her voice was contemptuous. She slid a hand into her breeches pocket and dropped a bracelet with red stones and a blue pendant on the table beside her. ‘I was going to put them back tonight. You can give them to her next time you see her.’
‘Why did you take them?’
‘An impulse. I thought I might get one of our people to say he’d found them and take them back to her.’
‘As another way of getting in to Gore House? You could have done that by walking up to her front door by daylight. So what did you intend to do there tonight?’
She didn’t answer. I thought I knew, though. Lady Blessington asleep, her maid gone and the lamp turned out. This woman appearing from the wardrobe or under the bed, hand over mouth before she could scream. I smiled, thinking it wouldn’t have worked: Lady Blessington would have bit her to the bone and cracked her over the head with a water carafe. She caught the smile.
‘You think this is a joke?’
‘Far from it.’ I thought of the black shape falling from the hatch, the smell. Lesparre was, in their eyes, a traitor already condemned. So had some of her friends trussed him up to wait for a mock trial before the hatch was released? If so, why hadn’t they told her? The kettle boiled. I made tea but she wafted her glass for more Madeira so I filled it up again.
‘Lesparre talked about papers,’ I said. ‘He told Lady Blessington he was carrying some that might save the prince’s life.’
‘Believe me, whatever he was carrying, he wasn’t intending any good to the prince. Are there papers?’
‘Lesparre wouldn’t be parted from a satchel of them.’ I was fishing and she was definitely interested, though wary.
‘He has them now?’
‘I don’t know.’ At some point she’d have to learn that Lesparre was dead – always supposing she didn’t know it already – but I wanted to get what I could from her first. I’d given her something new to think about and watched her eyes rove round the room as she did it, taking in what seemed to me the comfortable disorder of the place, the glowing fire, scattered books and newspapers, the cat that had given her breeches a cautious sniff then taken up residence on my lap. Suddenly she was tense, sitting up straight and focusing on something.
‘What’s that?’
I’d put the portfolio with D’Orsay’s drawing open on the table. She was on her feet before I could say anything, picking it up. The movement was so sudden that the cat jumped down, startled. Then she froze, looking down at it.
‘What’s that doing here?’
‘Lesparre’s valet. But of course you’d know him from Boulogne. Is it a good likeness?’
She took her time, staring down at it. ‘Not particularly, no. But why are you interested in Lesparre’s valet?’
‘I want to find him. Do you know where he is?’
She shook her head. I’d expected more questions but tiredness and probably the pain from her wrist seemed to be catching up with her. She sat down and closed her eyes. ‘So, will you permit me to go now?’ Energy was visibly draining away from her.
‘Go where, and at this time of night?’ No answer. ‘I suggest you stay here, and in the morning we’ll both go and speak to Lady Blessington. You can try and convince her that Lesparre is a spy. Why not do it the direct way?’ I was aware that I was being anything but direct myself but I didn’t want to lose sight of her. Even with her hurt wrist, I was by no means sure I could stop her if it came to a physical struggle.
‘Very well, I’ll trust you,’ she said, as if making a great concession, eyes open now. She trusted me as much as a jeweller trusts a jackdaw. So I’d gained my point and landed myself with the problem of where to put her. My bed upstairs was big enough for two of us but for all I knew she might have a knife in her pocket after all. Any other visitor could have had the chaise longue in my study, but I’d have had to sleep on the floor or the landing outside.
‘We’ll stay in the parlour,’ I said. ‘You can have the sofa.’ She took off her boots and stretched out on it like an old campaigner and I took the armchair by the fire. I didn’t expect to sleep but must have dozed because when a noise downstairs woke me the fire had burned low and daylight was coming in through the gap between the curtains. Eleonore was asleep, or pretending to be. The noise again, the sharp rattle of gravel against the window. Only Tabby’s aim was that accurate. I drew back the curtains and saw her white face looking up from the yard. She signalled to me urgently to come down. I put on my shoes and went, taking the precaution of bolting the door at the bottom of the staircase from outside.
‘Cobblers,’ she said. ‘He’s hurt. He might be dead by now.’
‘Where?’
‘Off Hatton Garden. Plush and I found him. Plush is with him.’
I was still fuddled from the happenings of the night and wondered what they’d been doing so far from their usual area until I remembered about following Slater. By then, we were out of the yard and walking fast. The morning was grey and drizzling but there was no question of going back for my cloak, not with that clenched look on Tabby’s face. We made our way eastwards, by alleys and shortcuts she knew, through the backstage area of a city that was still heaving itself awake, night soil wagons creaking along behind raw-boned horses, beggars in doorways rolling themselves tighter in their bundles of rags to put off the moment of being fully awake, night watchmen walking home muscular dogs that were threats on four legs.
‘How did it happen?’ I asked.
‘Don’t know.’ She resented the waste of breath, so I didn’t ask again.
As we turned into Hatton Garden, I began to have a suspicion where we were heading. It was too early for the barrel organ to be out and shutters were still down on most of the shops, yellowed blinds blanking the windows of grey lodging houses. We turned into the familiar narrow street and she made for the church. A flight of three steps led down from its shallow portico to the pavement. Plush was sitting on the bottom step, with Cobblers slumped against him, face buried into his shoulder, bare feet splayed apart on the pavement. An elderly woman in black was standing beside them, holding a glass of water.
Plush looked up at us, his face crunched up with anxiety. ‘What’s she saying?’
The woman was speaking Italian. ‘That we should get him to hospital,’ I translated. It seemed like a good idea to me. St Bartholomew’s was only a short cab drive away. But when I said the word Tabby looked shocked and Cobblers gave a groan and his feet writhed, trying to propel him upright.
‘People die in hospitals,’ Plush explained and Tabby nodded.
‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘Head mostly.’ Gently, for a lad whose hands looked harder than horses’ hooves, Plush raised Cobbler’s head. The left side of his face was totally clotted in a mask of partly dried blood, the eyelid closed and gummed down. More blood dripped off his chin on to the grey knitted comforter he wore tucked into his jacket instead of a shirt, making it look like red chain armour. His right eye was open, but only just, the flesh round it red and swollen. I made myself look closely and realized that most of the blood was coming from a wound on his forehead, a triangular flap of skin hanging down. No sign of a broken skull at any rate. I went up a step to look at his head from the back. A lump was forming above his right ear suggesting he’d been coshed there.
‘What else?’ I said to Plush.
‘His knees. He says they kicked them.’
‘Anywhere else?’
‘All over.’
I knew he should be in hospital, but it was no use trying to get him there against the opposition of the three of them, even with Cobblers helpless. Hospitals meant people in authority and they were the enemy. I crouched on the steps while the woman persuaded Cobblers to drink some water.
‘Very well, I’ll get a cab and we’ll take him home. Wait here.’ Then, thinking about it: ‘Unless the people who did this to him are likely to come back.’
‘If they do, you’d better bring a coffin cart for them along with the cab,’ Plush said. He looked as if he meant it and so did Tabby. It wasn’t reassuring but I walked quickly back to Hatton Garden and then to Holborn and managed to flag down a cab. The driver up on the box was happy enough to take a lady to Park Lane, less so when he found out that the journey would be via Hatton Garden. When we turned into the small street and he saw the situation, unease turned into downright rebellion. Get fleas and blood in his cab and he’d have to wash it out and be off the road for days, probably need new upholstery. Judging from the cracked state of the seat inside, it was well overdue for that anyway, but I didn’t argue, just stood there on the pavement, keeping tight hold of the rein of his horse that was in no hurry to move anyway, and held up two sovereigns in my palm. Incidents on past cases had taught me never to travel without a war purse.
‘One of these now, the other when you get us home.’ It was gross overpayment, even if the cab would need washing. Even so, it might not have convinced him except that Tabby was holding firmly to the rein on the other side and the Italian woman had gathered a squad of friends, possibly from inside the church, who seemed to have enrolled themselves as Cobblers’s guardian angels. Some huddled round Plush, who’d managed to get Cobblers on his feet, and helped to propel the two of them towards the cab while others stood across the street so that the driver couldn’t move without mowing them down, all this with a chorus of voices in operatic-sounding Italian that burst round the man like a thunderstorm. He watched, beaten, while we manoeuvred Cobblers inside. A cab will only take two people, side by side, so when he wasn’t looking I tried to give Tabby the remains of my war purse so that she and Plush could find another cab. She waved it aside.
‘We’ll be there before you will.’ Given their knowledge of the back streets, and the pressure of other traffic once the cab had turned into Holborn, she was probably right. Throughout the long journey, Cobblers leaned against me. I think he was conscious most of the time because sometimes when the cab lurched badly he swore in a harsh, concentrated way that was probably his substitute for groaning. He was still bleeding, but not quite so badly. Most of it was mopped up by an old shawl one of the women had tucked round him. I didn’t ask questions because he was too ill for that. Perhaps he’d said something to Tabby and Plush. If so, they’d tell me in time. The priority was trying to keep Cobblers alive. Then, whether he was alive or dead, they’d want revenge on whoever had done this to him. I thought about this, then corrected it in my own mind: we’d want revenge.