The smell of smoke still hung heavily in the air when Mr. Colquhoun reached Bow Street on Monday morning. He’d had no word from Lady Fieldhurst since he’d left John Pickett in her care the previous evening. He told himself that this must be a good sign; surely she would have sent word to him if—well, if anything untoward had happened after he’d gone.
He had scarcely seated himself at the magistrate’s bench before he was approached by Mr. Dixon, at fifty years of age the eldest of the Runners.
“Mr. Colquhoun,” said this worthy, nodding his grizzled head. “Have you any news on Mr. Pickett?”
“I have at that,” said the magistrate. “He has awakened several times, but only briefly. He appears to have no memory of the events of that night, and is in no condition to speak of them even if he did. Still, I am cautiously optimistic.”
“That is good news, sir,” said Mr. Dixon. “But as I recall, Mr. Pickett has no family. Surely he is not alone?”
“No, he has—someone—staying with him.”
Something in the magistrate’s expression must have given him away. “Someone? But who? If I may be so bold,” added Mr. Dixon hastily.
Mr. Colquhoun was reluctant to betray the young couple who, he suspected, would not be getting an annulment anytime soon. And yet, he reasoned, anyone who called to inquire after Mr. Pickett would discover the truth quickly enough.
“In fact, her ladyship, the Viscountess Fieldhurst, has taken it upon herself to nurse him—not the wife of the present holder of the title, but the widow of the previous one.”
“Well, if that don’t beat the Dutch!” exclaimed Mr. Dixon, chuckling. “Leave it to our Mr. Pickett to land on his feet. I wonder, if I were to get myself coshed on the head, could I get a ladyship to look after me?”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Dixon,” said Mr. Foote, joining them at the bench, “but youth has its advantages, you know. You’re neither as young nor as pretty as Mr. Pickett.” A smattering of uncomfortable laughter greeted this sally, as all the men present recognized it as more of a gibe at the absent Pickett than at its apparent target.
“Too true, alas,” noted Dixon with an exaggerated sigh. “But Mr. Colquhoun was just relaying good news about young Mr. Pickett. It seems he’s waking up at last.”
Mr. Foote looked to the magistrate for confirmation.
“Aye, although he’s still a bit rattled in the head. Seems to have little or no memory of what befell him on the night of the fire.”
“Good news, indeed,” agreed Mr. Foote. “And I hope I may soon have more good news to report. In the meantime, I have something here that I think you’ll find pleasing.”
He reached inside his coat and withdrew a necklace of emeralds, the green stones winking in the morning sunlight streaming through the windows. Mr. Colquhoun’s bushy white eyebrows rose.
“Lady Oversley’s, I gather? Pleasing indeed! Well done, Mr. Foote. Where did you find them?”
“In a pawnshop in Feathers Court,” he said.
Mr. Colquhoun frowned. “Feathers Court? Seems a rather unsavory address to be trading in jewels of this quality.”
“I daresay it was chosen for just that reason,” said Mr. Foote. “I suspect our thief already had a buyer waiting, and Mr. Baumgarten’s shop was selected because it would be the last place we might be expected to look.”
“Sounds like a reasonable conjecture. Tell me, Mr. Foote, what tipped you off?”
Mr. Foote shook his head. “Nothing in particular, but since the thefts all seemed to be taking place around the Drury Lane Theatre, it seemed wise to check the pawnshops in that area.”
“But still no leads as to our thief’s identity?”
Foote shook his head. “I’m afraid not, sir. In between protesting his innocence of any wrongdoing, Mr. Baumgarten refuses to name his supplier. I don’t know, perhaps he doesn’t know the man’s name.”
“ ‘Man’?” Mr. Colquhoun echoed sharply, bushy white brows drawing together over his nose. “You are sure the seller is a man?”
Mr. Foote looked rather nonplussed. “He didn’t say, sir, but I assumed it must be so.”
“Assumptions are dangerous in this business, Mr. Foote,” the magistrate said. “I should have thought you had been around long enough to know that.”
“Yes, sir,” muttered Foote, flushing.
“Begging your pardon, sir.” Mr. Maxwell, a man of almost forty who had recently joined the Bow Street force after a French ball put paid to his military career, came rushing up to the bench waving a newspaper. “I wondered what you made of this tidbit in the Times.”
“The part about an anonymous hero who hustled the royal party out of their box just before the fire broke out?” asked the magistrate, scowling. “Yes, I saw that. I would give a lot to know who the fellow was.”
“So would the Russians, sir. They’re offering a considerable reward for information.”
Mr. Colquhoun jerked a thumb in the direction of his most senior Runner. “If they are looking to pay out a reward, perhaps they should talk to Mr. Foote,” he suggested with tongue in cheek. “It appears he’s just about to pocket a tidy sum for the recovery of the Oversley emeralds.”
“Congratulations, Mr. Foote,” said Dixon, then added jovially, “Couldn’t you share the wealth with those of us who are looking toward retirement?”
Mr. Maxwell’s mind, however, was on other things. “Congratulations, Mr. Foote,” he said distractedly, then turned back to the magistrate. “But that wasn’t what I meant. Have you seen this, sir? Or are you perhaps the one responsible for it?”
He handed the newspaper over the bench, pointing toward an advertisement not quite halfway down the page. Reward offered for Information concerning Attack on Unarmed Man in Russell Street on the Night of the Drury Lane Theatre Fire. Call in person, Number 84 Drury Lane. Inquire of Mrs. P.
The magistrate sat up abruptly. “What the devil—?”
“So you didn’t place the advertisement, sir?” asked Mr. Maxwell. “Then who did?”
“I detect the fine Italian hand of her well-meaning but meddlesome ladyship,” grumbled Mr. Colquhoun.
“Who is Mrs. P?” asked Dixon, receiving the newspaper from the magistrate and scanning the cryptic lines. “Mr. Pickett is not married, and I thought his mother had been dead this age.”
“Aye, dead or deserted,” confirmed Mr. Colquhoun. “I doubt the boy knows himself. No, I believe our mysterious Mrs. P. is none other than Lady Fieldhurst herself.”
Mr. Maxwell goggled at the very idea. “A viscountess is pretending to be Mr. Pickett’s wife?”
In fact, there was no pretense about it, but that was no one else’s business. Quite aside from keeping the young couple’s secret, Mr. Colquhoun found himself reluctant to give Mr. Foote any more ammunition with which to torment Mr. Pickett upon his return to Bow Street, or any more fodder with which to nurture the grudge the elder Runner had held against the younger for more than a decade.
“I suppose I shall have to call on ‘Mrs. P.’ myself and see what’s toward,” said the magistrate with a sigh. “Mr. Foote, I’ll see about getting you that finder’s fee as soon as I return.”
The group about the magistrate’s bench dispersed, all except Maxwell, who hung back.
“Yes, Mr. Maxwell? What is it?”
“It may well be none of my business, sir, but exactly what gives between Mr. Foote and Mr. Pickett?”
Mr. Colquhoun made a dismissive gesture. “Professional jealousy, no more and no less. You may be aware that Mr. Pickett first came to our attention as a juvenile pickpocket.”
Maxwell nodded. “I had heard something to that effect, yes. But surely his work here has more than made up for any youthful crimes he may have committed.”
“Aye, and committed at his father’s instigation at that, for a more shiftless—but that is neither here nor there. In fact, Mr. Foote’s resentment stems from an incident ten years ago, when he was still on the foot patrol. He arrested young John Pickett, who was scarcely fourteen years old at the time, for petty thievery. I dismissed the charges and sent the boy off with a flea in his ear. Mr. Foote took my leniency in the matter as a personal affront, and insisted I had made a mistake. In fact, he predicted the lad would be back to his thieving ways within a fortnight. And he was quite right; after all, what are the direst threats of a magistrate compared to the demands of a supposedly loving father?”
“It must have been quite a blow to Mr. Foote to find himself obliged to work side by side with the same man he’d once arrested,” observed Mr. Maxwell, glancing over his shoulder toward the other side of the room, where Foote regaled the foot patrol with an account of his recovery of the Oversley emeralds.
“Aye, especially when young Mr. Pickett solved a case that had stymied Mr. Foote for weeks. He wasn’t even with Bow Street at the time,” added the magistrate with a reminiscent gleam in his eye. “After I sentenced his father to be transported to Botany Bay, I realized that the boy Mr. Foote had brought in was the man’s son. I thought I could prevent him from following in his father’s footsteps by offering him an opportunity to earn an honest living, so I arranged for him to be apprenticed to a coal merchant. Faugh! Coal merchant!” he echoed contemptuously, berating himself, not for the first time, for his lack of foresight. “I should have seen to the lad’s education instead. I doubt Eton or Harrow would have taken a boy of his background, but Westminster might have, especially if I’d called in a few favors. But I had no idea of the boy’s intelligence at that time, and so for the next five years, John Pickett delivered coal to the magistrate’s court. On one such occasion, he was obliged to wait for payment until I’d finished hearing a case. By the time I brought him a bank draft, he’d picked up a copy of the Hue and Cry left lying about, and simply by reading about the case, picked up on the one clue that Mr. Foote had overlooked. To make a long story short, I bought out the remaining years of his apprenticeship from my own pocket and brought him to Bow Street as a member of the foot patrol. He was all of nineteen years old at the time, to Mr. Foote’s thirty.”
Mr. Maxwell chuckled, for in spite of his competence, Mr. Foote was not particularly well liked. “I’ll wager that did not sit well with Mr. Foote.”
“No, indeed! And while I can understand his sentiments on that occasion, perhaps even sympathize with them to some extent, I did not expect him to nurse a grudge for fully a decade after the fact. Ah well,” he added with a shrug, “Mr. Foote is pocketing a tidy sum for himself in finders’ fees these days, so perhaps it will soon be Mr. Pickett’s turn to envy him.”
But even as he said the words, Mr. Colquhoun knew he did not believe them. He suspected Pickett was incapable of the sort of festering resentment that Mr. Foote had harbored toward him for ten long years, largely because Pickett considered himself undeserving of his good fortune, while Foote felt himself entitled to more. Mr. Colquhoun wished he could grant Pickett just a bit of Foote’s arrogance, while giving Foote a rather larger share of Pickett’s humility.
Mr. Maxwell, recognizing that the confidential interview was at an end, thanked the magistrate for enlightening his ignorance, and returned to his work. As for Mr. Colquhoun, he had more important things to do than coddle the wounded vanity of a grown man—and the most pressing of these involved a visit to Drury Lane and “Mrs. P.”
After seeing the doctor on his way and receiving the day’s supplies of coal and water from Mrs. Catchpole, Lady Fieldhurst spent the rest of the morning fussing about Pickett’s flat, folding his linen and putting his bureau drawers in some semblance of order, washing and drying his meager collection of plates and cups, and even arranging his small library in alphabetical order—a frenzy of housewifely activity that served to distract her from trekking back and forth to Pickett’s bedside to feel his forehead in the desperate hope that his fever might have abated.
At last, having run out of things to set straight, she fetched The Vicar of Wakefield from its place on the mantel (under “G” for Goldsmith, between Fielding’s notorious Tom Jones and Matthew Lewis’s popular gothic novel, The Monk) and settled down beside Pickett’s bed to read aloud in the hopes that he might hear and find her voice soothing.
“ ‘Chapter Two: Family Misfortunes—The loss of fortune only serves to increase the pride of the worthy. The temporal concerns of our family were chiefly committed to my wife’s management; as to the spiritual, I took them entirely under my own—’ ”
She had not finished the first paragraph when a knock sounded on the door; Thomas, no doubt, come with her daily supplies and, she hoped, some news of the recalcitrant Lucy. She cast the book aside, the unfortunate vicar and his family’s woes forgotten.
But it was not Thomas, much less Lucy, who stood leaning against the door frame. Instead, Julia found herself confronting a man she’d never seen before in her life, a tall, lean man in a shabby frock coat and frayed knitted cap pulled low on his head. His eyes were beady and black, and his face was pockmarked.
“Mrs. P.?” he asked, revealing a mouthful of blackened teeth.
“Yes,” she said uncertainly.
“I’m ’ere about the bit in the newspaper.”
“Oh! Oh yes, my advertisement. Won’t you come in Mr.—?”
He tugged at the hank of greasy dark hair sticking out below his cap. “Bartlesby, ma’am. Jem Bartlesby, at your service,” he said, and although he bowed low, she could not think his grin anything but insolent.
He stepped into the room, and for the first time Julia began to question the wisdom of placing such an advertisement. Somehow she had expected any respondents to be of the aristocracy or perhaps the gentry, other theatre-goers who had escaped the conflagration ahead of herself and Mr. Pickett. She had not anticipated the possibility of being obliged to entertain such persons as Mr. Bartlesby, and the knowledge that she could not count on Mr. Pickett’s coming to her rescue, should she stand in need of him, made her feel frighteningly vulnerable. She wished Mr. Colquhoun were here. Even Lucy’s company would have been welcome; given that damsel’s profession, Julia suspected Lucy would know how to deal with the likes of Mr. Bartlesby should the situation warrant it. She glanced toward Pickett’s room, and was thankful she’d closed his bedroom door to contain the heat; at least Mr. Bartlesby need not know how very unprotected she was. Of course, two of the three chairs were in that room as well, but this presented no particular difficulty, as she was not inclined to encourage Mr. Bartlesby to linger.
“Am I to understand, Mr. Bartlesby, that you have information for me?”
“I might ’ave,” he said. “What’s it worth to you?”
This was another issue she had not anticipated. What price did one put on such information? No cost was too great to make Mr. Pickett’s attacker pay for his crime, but surely it would be unwise to tip her hand too soon.
“I shall give you a shilling to hear what you have to say,” she answered, hoping she was being neither too generous nor too parsimonious. “More afterward, if I deem the information worth it.”
Mr. Bartlesby was silent for such a long moment that Julia feared he refused to answer. As she debated the wisdom of increasing her offer, he finally spoke.
“In the street outside the theatre, it were. I seen a stout fellow with a cudgel. Black as a burnt stump, ’e were, from all the smoke, but ’e ’ad a ’ead full o’ black ’air, and a thick beard to match.”
Julia’s eyes widened at this account. In the back row of the royal box, seated beside the incognito princess, had been a man who matched Mr. Bartlesby’s description exactly. Her heart sank as well, for it would be a very delicate matter to prefer charges against a member of the Russian royal court.
“And you saw him strike Mr.—you saw him strike a man with this cudgel?”
“Oh, aye, ’e coshed this ’ere unarmed fellow, then took ’imself off.”
“Where did he go?” Julia asked urgently.
“Now, that I can’t tell you. I didn’t know it would be important,” he added apologetically.
Julia could not but wonder at a philosophy that would deem the attack of an unarmed man unimportant, and determined to remove Mr. Pickett to her own residence in a less unsavory part of Town as soon as he could be safely transported. “Thank you, Mr. Bartlesby, you’ve been most helpful. I believe you have earned your shilling and another besides.” She picked up her reticule from the table and withdrew the two coins. “Will you furnish me with your direction, in case I should need to contact you again?”
He shook his head. “Nay, ma’am, that I won’t do, for there’s no love lost between me and Bow Street, if you take my meaning. Still, a message left at the Cock and Magpie will find me.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bartlesby,” Julia said again, moving toward the door to indicate that the interview was at an end. She was thankful she had not been so indiscreet as to mention Mr. Pickett’s occupation, as the revelation might have sealed Mr. Bartlesby’s lips. “If you should think of anything else, I hope you will inform me.”
“Aye, for a price,” he assured her, biting each of the two coins in turn before slipping them into the pocket of his coat.
He tugged his forelock and took his leave, and she had hardly shut the door when Mr. Colquhoun arrived with a folded newspaper under his arm, his face dark with wrath.
“Do you mind telling me what this is all about?” He opened the newspaper with a snap of his wrists and jabbed a finger at the offending advertisement.
“I am seeking information from anyone who might be able to identify Jo—Mr. Pickett’s attacker,” she said defensively. “And I’m getting it, too. A man just left—you might have met him on the stairs—who was most obliging.”
“Aye, I’ll warrant he was—for a price,” Mr. Colquhoun growled.
“Well, yes,” confessed Lady Fieldhurst. “Two shillings, in fact, but it was money well spent.”
“And how do you know he wasn’t telling you a Banbury tale just to collect the proffered reward?”
“I see your point, Mr. Colquhoun, and perhaps I should have worded my advertisement differently—offering payment only if the information should lead to an arrest, perhaps. But I am persuaded Mr. Bartlesby’s contribution was worth every farthing. You see, I believe I know the man he described.”
The magistrate’s eyebrows rose in skeptical surprise. “Indeed?”
“Well, I don’t know him, precisely—that is, we have never been formally introduced. But I am quite certain I know who he is.”
“Then who, pray, is he?”
“I do not know his name, but he was seated in the royal box, in the back row just beside Princess Olga. A large man with black hair and a thick black beard.”
“Good God!” exclaimed Mr. Colquhoun in failing accents. “You’ve just described His Excellency, Vladimir Gregorovich. And this Bartlesby saw him attack Mr. Pickett? Small wonder His Excellency was so impatient to know how the investigation was progressing!”
“You have met him, then?”
“Unfortunately, yes. He came to Bow Street the day after the fire, the blackguard, demanding to know what I was doing about the theft of Princess Olga’s diamonds. I’ll wager I can guess who’s got them now!”
And I’ll wager you can’t, thought Lady Fieldhurst. Aloud, she merely said, “But I don’t understand why he should attack Mr. Pickett.”
“Perhaps he thought Mr. Pickett might have seen him do the deed from his vantage point across the theatre,” suggested the magistrate. “If so, he must have a very high estimation of Mr. Pickett’s eyesight.”
“Oh, but I had brought my opera glasses and let Mr. Pickett use them!” Julia exclaimed. “So it is quite possible he might have seen something that His Excellency found threatening. In fact, now that I think of it, I am almost certain he did. To be sure, he saw something that struck him as odd—I cannot remember his exact words—but then he realized the theatre was on fire, and I fear the matter, whatever it was, was forgotten in the more immediate crisis.”
“A pity, that,” remarked Mr. Colquhoun. “We can only hope he will remember it when next he awakens.”
Julia sighed. “As to that, I am afraid I have bad news to report. He began running a fever last night. The doctor has seen him this morning, and he says the wound has apparently become infected.”
“I see.” Mr. Colquhoun scowled, needing no further explanation to know that this diagnosis was not encouraging. “May I sit with him?”
“Of course. I am merely keeping the door closed to preserve the heat.” She opened the door to the bedroom and preceded the magistrate inside. “In fact, I would be grateful if you could stay with him this afternoon while I pay a call upon Her Royal Highness, the Princess Olga Fyodorovna.”
The magistrate’s scowl grew fiercer. “Just what plan are you hatching, my lady?”
“I intend to find out all I can about His Excellency, Vladimir Gregorovich.”
Mr. Colquhoun could not agree to this. “Don’t think I’m not grateful to you for providing Bow Street with so promising a lead, my lady, but I believe you have done quite enough. It is time you left the investigation in the hands of those who have been professionally trained for it.”
“This all sounds very well, Mr. Colquhoun, but can you name one person on your force who would have the entrée to the Russian court as well as I?”
“As soon as my Runner states his business, he will not be turned away,” predicted the magistrate.
“I daresay he will not. But I flatter myself the Princess Olga would be much more forthcoming to a lady of the British aristocracy come to offer her sympathy on the loss of the diamonds—a lady, moreover, who is intimately acquainted”—she felt herself blushing at the unfortunate choice of words—“with a member of the Bow Street force, and can reassure her as to its competence. And if I should ask her, as one woman to another, to recount her experiences on the night of the fire, who knows what she might confide?”
“I see your point, my lady, but have you considered that His Excellency might learn of your visit, and connect you with Mr. Pickett? After all, you were sharing the same box. No, I cannot ask such a thing of you.”
“You didn’t ask,” she pointed out. “I offered.”
“Then I fear I must decline your very generous offer.”
“But Mr. Colquhoun—”
“To be blunt, my lady, I am not thinking of your welfare, but of Mr. Pickett’s. If any harm should come to you, and he should learn of it—”
“I do see your point, Mr. Colquhoun, and I must say your scruples are admirable. But I can’t—” She glanced at the still figure in the bed. “I can’t sit here day after day, seeing him like this, and do nothing!”
“On the contrary,” the magistrate said, his tone surprisingly gentle, “I believe you have done a great deal already, probably more than you know. But—if you will forgive my asking—in two weeks’ time, when the petition for annulment comes before the ecclesiastical court?”
She took a deep, steadying breath. “As far as I am concerned, there isn’t going to be any annulment,” she said. “If he wants one, of course, I will yield to his wishes in the matter, but I have already written to my solicitor instructing him to suspend his efforts on my behalf, and to surrender to me any relevant documents—including a certain physician’s letter that Mr. Pickett will no doubt wish to place on the fire, where I suspect it belongs.”
The magistrate was silent for a long moment as he pondered this revelation, which, if the truth were known, did not shock him nearly as much as Julia thought it might. “I see,” he said at last. “I suppose that changes things. Very well, my la—er, Mrs. Pickett, if you wish to call upon the Princess Olga at her hotel, I will not stand in your way. But you are to report any findings directly to me, do you understand, and under no circumstances are you to even hint that His Excellency is under suspicion! Do I make myself clear?”
“Very clear,” she said, smiling broadly at him, now that she had won.
“As for my sitting with him, however, I wish I could, but I fear I have been absent from Bow Street too much already. Is there no one else who might oblige?”
She paused to consider the question. Her own staff was already being put to considerable inconvenience, but more to the purpose, she did not want Mr. Pickett waking up to a stranger, and her servants were unknown to him except for Rogers the butler, who had his own duties to attend to, and Thomas the footman, who was at that moment scouring the streets of Covent Garden in search of Lucy.
Lucy . . . As little as she liked the idea, she had to admit that Lucy would do nothing to harm him, at least not intentionally.
“There is a girl,” she said without enthusiasm, “a prostitute, actually, who I suppose I can trust to look after him.”
“Lucy Higgins,” said the magistrate, nodding in understanding.
“You know her?” she asked, surprised.
“As you might guess, given her profession, she appears rather frequently before the bench. But if she is our only alternative, I think I had best stay with him after all, for my opinion of Miss Higgins is not high.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “He once entertained the idea of marrying her, you know.”
“He—he would have married—Lucy?” She sat down abruptly on the edge of the bed, her hand pressed to her abdomen as if she had just received a blow to that area.
“He did not love her, he was quite clear on that point,” Mr. Colquhoun assured her. “In fact, he was convinced that, since he could not have the woman he wanted—I trust I need make no explanations on that head—he could give meaning to his blighted existence by rescuing Miss Higgins from the gutter. You will have noticed that our Mr. Pickett is a rare one for the grand romantic gesture,” he added with a twinkle in his eye.
“I have indeed,” she said, smiling wistfully down at Pickett and running her fingers through his disheveled curls. She had been the object of one of those grand gestures herself, for he had been willing to allow a doctor to falsely declare him impotent in order to release her from an accidental marriage he was sure she could not want. In fact, as much as she regretted what had befallen him at the theatre, she shuddered to think that the annulment would have been granted and they would have gone their separate ways, had the fire and its aftermath not forced her to recognize her own heart.
“In fact, it was to remove him from Lucy and try to talk some sense into him that I dragged him off to Scotland,” the magistrate continued.
“Was it?” asked Julia in some surprise. “I confess, I thought you had taken him to Scotland to get him away from me.”
“It is true that I was not best pleased to find you there,” admitted Mr. Colquhoun. “Still, your presence did more to dissuade him from marrying Lucy than anything I might have said. And, given the way things have turned out, I cannot be sorry. I wonder, though, if you are aware of what you are letting yourself in for. His prospects, you must know, are no more than what he makes them. Mind you, if he were a decade older, I would not hesitate to put his name forward for a magistracy, but a lad not yet five-and-twenty? Any such suggestion would be laughed to scorn, and rightfully so.”
“I am well aware of how Society must view such a match, and I assure you, it does not matter to me one whit. Any true friend will stand with me, and as for the others, they may think what they like. If it is a matter of money that concerns you, I must tell you that my widow’s jointure was established in such a way that it will not end with my remarriage. In fact, Mr. Colquhoun,” she concluded, lifting her chin and giving the magistrate a rather smug smile, “your protégé has married a fortune, albeit a modest one by Society’s standards.”
“Hmmm,” was Mr. Colquhoun’s only comment. He suspected Lady Fieldhurst’s fortune would be anything but modest in John Pickett’s eyes. He further suspected his youngest Runner was not the sort of man who would be content to live on his wife’s largesse.
But surely the most urgent matter at present was to get the boy well. Anything else could wait for another day.