LIEUTENANT DODD-BELLINGHAM KNELT by his brother’s side, weeping. Child stared hard at Orin, who was taking congratulations from the Bow Street Runners. Mrs Corsham hurried up to Child, and placed a hand on his arm. ‘Thank heaven you are unhurt.’
Cavill-Lawrence emerged from the gallery, and peered down at Simon. Seeing there was nothing to be done for him, he grunted his satisfaction. Child and Mrs Corsham followed him back into the gallery. Jonathan Stone was on his knees, collecting the pieces of one of his pots, looking stricken.
He glanced up as they entered. ‘Simon killed Pamela?’ He sounded astonished. ‘I thought it was Lord March.’
‘Simon made it look that way,’ Child said. ‘Principally, I think, because he didn’t want anyone – especially you – asking why he might have killed her.’
‘I’m asking that now. What reason did he have?’
Everyone looked at Child expectantly. The others had heard a garbled explanation earlier at the magistrate’s, but they plainly wanted to hear more.
‘Pass me your ring,’ Child said to Stone.
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘Your ring.’
Stone slid it off his finger, and Child took the ring to the window, holding it up to the light. He examined the garnet carved with the head of a woman, and on the reverse, the head of a goat. The gold setting, he noticed now, held a slight coppery sheen. You’d probably never notice it, unless you were looking for it.
‘It’s pinchbeck over brass,’ he said. ‘I believe the lieutenant said you paid forty guineas apiece for those rings. And much more for this, the original. I suspect they’re all fakes. I think Lucy realized after she stole the lieutenant’s ring to trick Moll Silversleeves. After all, she was familiar with frauds like this.’
He thought of Nelly and Lucy, all those years ago, in the Sun tavern on Milk Street. We had a forty-guinea gold ring what I’d napped off a client, and we looked for a certain sort of gentleman: the confident, crafty sort who’d take advantage of a trusting lady. Lucy made out she didn’t know the ring’s true value – offered it for sale at ten guineas. She did all the talking, I made the switch. Gentleman takes his gold ring home to celebrate his cunning, only to find he’s paid ten guineas for pinchbeck and polish.
‘Lucy said she knew who the killer was,’ Child went on. ‘She said she had proof of his guilt. I think she was talking about that ring. It’s why she took it to the bower, to show Mrs Corsham.’
Stone shook his head. ‘Are you saying that Simon sold me a fake knowingly?’
Child was stirring the pottery shards of a broken lamp with his foot. It had been decorated with orgiastic scenes like the urn in Simon’s workshop. He recalled Simon saying that Stone paid extra for such pieces. Picking up the broken base of the lamp, Child ran his thumb around the edge, feeling a line of glue. He showed it to Stone.
‘I’m guessing the base was from an older piece, with a newly fired top – painted by Simon. He turned a genuine piece bought for shillings into something much more valuable that would suit your tastes.’
A large wad of paper was wedged into the lamp’s base, presumably to balance it on one side. Child pulled it out and smoothed the papers on Stone’s table. Lottery tickets, dated 1781.
‘My guess is pretty much everything in your collection is a fake of one kind or another. Broken statues joined together, as he was doing in his yard when Mrs Corsham and I spoke to him for the first time. Pinchbeck jewellery. Counterfeit coins. I should have guessed when I saw the barrel of nails in his workshop. It’s an old trick with fraudulent coins, as Mr Stone knows. Simon was uncomfortable with us just being there, but I put that down to the murders. Here is Lucy’s proof. It’s all around us.’
Stone stared at the lottery tickets in dismay. ‘But my collection is worth over fifty thousand pounds.’
‘I’d guess a good proportion of that has gone into Simon’s pocket. You thought you were bleeding him dry, buying pieces from him on the cheap, because he owed you money he couldn’t repay. But in truth, he wasn’t your creature, you were his. I imagine he was squirrelling the money away in secret, ready for the day when he’d come into a mystery inheritance and settle his debts. Tell me, do you have a new house in Wiltshire? Farthingale Manor?’
Stone shook his head.
‘Simon said you did. I even considered the possibility that you were keeping Theresa Agnetti there. But I think the manor was bought by him, intended for a different lady entirely: Julia Ward. He said she was willing to elope with him, if he improved his finances.’
‘But I have studied antiquity,’ Stone said plaintively, casting his gaze around the gallery. ‘It cannot be true.’
‘I only guessed when I discovered that Pamela was Jewish,’ Child went on. ‘Her necklace was the key to it all. Pamela told a friend that her father had given it to her mother. I imagine he was poor, and abandoned her mother when she fell pregnant. But Solomon Loredo, himself a Jew, told me that the necklace was Indian in origin. I had to ask myself why he would lie.’
Solomon Loredo – who had taken enormous pains to emphasize Simon’s honesty at every turn. He had concealed from Child the story about Ansell Ward and the figurines, presumably because the fabricated theft hit rather too close to the mark for his liking.
‘I think Solomon Loredo made that ring, Stone’s so-called original. And probably most of the other jewellery here too. Like Simon, Loredo had once owed money to Stone. He described it to me as the worst time in his life. This was their revenge. Loredo told me that Simon had been to his house by St Mary-le-Bow on Cheapside. They probably plotted the whole enterprise there. I think that’s where Pamela met him for the first time.’
Child had thought it all through in the carriage. ‘Pamela was raised in a Jewish orphanage, I imagine. Like their Christian counterparts, they train their female charges for service. Loredo told me he’d struggled to keep a maidservant as they kept getting their heads turned by prostitution.’ Even good Jewish girls are tempted. ‘I think Pamela was one of his housemaids. We know she used to listen at doors. She must have recognized Simon, done a little research, and worked out that Stone was the man they were swindling. Perhaps she tried to blackmail Simon. We know she entertained dreams of marrying the lieutenant, and he had debts. Or maybe she threatened to tell Stone, because she was angry about Ambrose Craven and his syphilis. Either way, Simon couldn’t take the risk of Stone finding out, and so he killed her.’
‘That poor child,’ Mrs Corsham said. ‘Embroiled in all these deceptions of men. She deserved better from her life. And, God knows, from her death.’