NEMO MALUS FELIX. Peace visits not the guilty man. Not unless he drinks himself to oblivion.
The sun hurt Child’s eyes, the streets busy with people talking too loudly, in cheerful morning voices. In lieu of breakfast, he stopped off at a Puss and Mew in Carnaby Market. The shutters of the house were closed, one of them carved with a relief of a cat, holding out a wooden paw. ‘Puss,’ Child called. ‘Puss, are you there?’
A pause, then a shuffle behind the window. ‘Mew,’ came the answer. ‘Mew mew mew.’
The shutter remained closed, a necessary precaution given the gin laws. This way buyer couldn’t inform on seller, and everyone went away happy, except the magistrates. Child pushed two pennies through the slot in the cat’s open mouth. Then he reached into his pocket for the leather cup he carried for this purpose, and held it under the cat’s paw. The gin gurgled as it flowed from the concealed spout.
The spirit tasted foul, in keeping with Child’s mood. Illegal distilleries like this adulterated their gin with vitriol and turpentine. A pint of it could kill you. Today the prospect seemed quite tempting.
He had betrayed his client to their mutual enemy. He would be forced to do so again – give Stone information that could hurt Mrs Corsham. Unless he could talk her out of continuing with her inquiry.
But a short time later, when he faced Mrs Corsham in her dining room, she wouldn’t hear of it.
‘Stop?’ she said. ‘How can I? The magistrate has arrested poor Mr Von Siegel. For no other crime than for being Jewish, and in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sit down, Mr Child. I have much to tell you.’
Gloomily, he sat listening as she told him about her conversation with her brother and Cavill-Lawrence. Occasionally, her tale was interrupted by her infant son, who sat opposite them at a table that could have sat twenty, making messy work of a bowl of pottage. Mrs Corsham’s own plate of food was untouched. Her ginger footman hovered discreetly, looking at Child as though he was about to make off with the silver. Seeing Mrs Corsham here, in this domestic tableau with her son, his guilt returned full-force, so that he was hardly able to take in what she was saying.
The Prince of Wales. Mixed up with Jonathan Stone and his masquerades. Little wonder the Home Office were in such high dudgeon.
His client seemed more troubled by the involvement of her family’s bank than that of the heir to the throne. First her lover was embroiled in this, Child thought, then her brothers. But that was the trouble with the beau monde. They were a tight, exclusive circle, because that was the way they liked it. Marrying sisters and cousins. Keeping their money close. But throw a man like Stone into the barrel and the rot spread closely too.
‘Mrs Corsham,’ he tried again, when she had finished. ‘I beg you to see reason. The Prince of Wales could be the fifth man at the masquerade.’
‘I dearly hope not. But he could have easily travelled from Northamptonshire to Muswell Rise. It’s two days’ ride at most, one at a gallop.’
‘What if he killed Pamela?’
‘Surely not. He’s just a boy.’
‘He’s nineteen years old. Men far younger than him have committed murder. I don’t much fancy taking a stroll up to St James’s Palace to arrest the heir to the throne. And even if the Prince is innocent, the Home Office will never allow these crimes to come to trial. Not as long as the House of Hanover risks being drawn into it.’
‘We will find a way to make it happen,’ Mrs Corsham said, doggedly. ‘Lucy did – her letter to the Home Secretary might even have worked, if she hadn’t been murdered. And we can keep the Prince and the Craven Bank out of it, I am sure. I’ll not let them hang poor Mr Von Siegel for a crime he didn’t commit. Nor will I be bullied into silence.’
Child wondered if there was some other route out of this mess. A way to bring down Stone, before he could hurt Mrs Corsham. Whatever had gone on at Muswell Rise that night with Pamela, Stone was plainly up to his neck in it – and quite conceivably guilty of murder himself. If Child could get to the truth and do it fast, perhaps it would give him the means to fight back against Stone? It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the only one he had.
‘Lucy said to Hector that the Priapus Club’s greatest strength was also their greatest weakness,’ he said. ‘She must have meant the Prince.’
Mrs Corsham nodded. ‘My brother and Cavill-Lawrence weren’t telling me everything, I think. There is more to it, but I don’t yet know what.’
Her son looked up from his bowl to point at Child. ‘Monster, Mama, monster.’
‘Hush,’ she said, smiling fondly. ‘This is Mr Child, a very clever man who catches villains.’
Still thinking about Jonathan Stone and his betrayal, Child decided that the boy had it about right.
‘Do you have any children, sir?’ Mrs Corsham asked. ‘I know so little about you.’
‘I had a son once. He died.’
She stared at him aghast. ‘I’m sorry. That was a thoughtless question.’
He made a hopeless gesture. ‘It was a long time ago.’
To cover their awkwardness, she tacked back to their inquiry. ‘I found out something interesting from a friend of my sister-in-law. Before she disappeared, Theresa Agnetti had taken a lover: Lieutenant Dodd-Bellingham.’
Child raised his eyebrows. ‘Miss Willoughby, Theresa Agnetti, Pamela. Was there a woman in Agnetti’s house whom the lieutenant didn’t try to seduce?’
‘That’s how he is – just like his father. And he’s handsome, of course, charming enough when he wants to be – and persistent. For every ten women who say no, like Miss Willoughby, there will be one who says yes, like Mrs Agnetti.’
‘Perhaps he doesn’t like it when they say no – and when they’re poor and friendless, like Miss Willoughby, it makes no odds. Perhaps he tried to rape Pamela and she fought back?’
Mrs Corsham glanced at her son, seemingly anxious about the topic, but he seemed happily absorbed, scraping up the last of his pottage.
‘Lucy thought that Stone wanted Pamela at the masquerade for a purpose,’ Child went on. ‘That he trusted those men because he knew their secrets. If Simon is a thief and his brother is a rapist, then perhaps Stone has evidence of those crimes? Did you ever hear anything untoward about Lord March?’
‘No, but I do know he would never have introduced the Prince to Stone willingly. He took great pride in his role as Prinny’s mentor – perhaps the only thing he ever took seriously, apart from his poetry.’ She shook her head. ‘I hate to think of Pamela out there at Muswell Rise in the middle of the night, with no one to help her.’
‘Kitty was there.’ Child told her about his discoveries since they’d last met. ‘I think she felt guilty about whatever had happened to Pamela. It makes me wonder if it is her testimony that the Home Office are searching for. We know Lucy was looking for Kitty – perhaps she found her.’
‘Then we must find her too.’
The little boy jumped down from the table. ‘Mama, may I hunt the mouse again?’
‘He spotted it two days ago upon the nursery stairs,’ Mrs Corsham explained. ‘It’s sparked quite the obsession. You may hunt the mouse, my love, if Mrs Graves says you can. Miles, see him upstairs, will you, please?’
Frowning, she turned back to Child. ‘Do you think Kitty is the friend Lucy mentioned? The one who was supposed to give her dossier to the newspapers, but never did?’
‘It’s possible.’ Child thought of Nelly Diver’s battered, bleeding face. ‘If we’re right, then I hope to God that we find Kitty before the Home Office do. Assuming they haven’t already.’
‘I have my first sitting with Mr Agnetti this afternoon,’ Mrs Corsham said. ‘I’ll ask him about Kitty. And I’ll try to find out more about what went on in his house in the weeks before Pamela disappeared. I think you might be right that Theresa Agnetti is connected to all this somehow.’
‘You promised me that you wouldn’t meet with any of our suspects alone,’ Child objected. ‘Mr Agnetti might still be our fifth man.’
‘Miles will be downstairs. Agnetti will hardly try anything with him around.’
‘Lucy was surrounded by six thousand people. That didn’t help her.’
She smiled at his concern. ‘You are a stalwart servant, Mr Child.’