The Ashes of London (34 page)

‘Good God, there’s someone there,’ Cousin Edward was shouting. ‘Croughton! Croughton!’

Cat turned and ran, her wet skirts flapping about her.

The ground was broken here, a sloping tangle of grass, dying weeds, saplings and bushes. Behind her, the other dogs bayed, catching Bare-Arse’s excitement and spurred on by the shouts of Edward and the servant.

Her feet found their way to a winding path, sunken below the level of the ground on either side, and criss-crossed with the roots of stunted trees. The path plunged downwards, and the lower she went, the more the sounds dropped away, the shouting and the barking.

But there were no sounds of pursuit.

She ran on until, panting, she reached a stile to a lane. Judging by the sun, it ran more or less from east to west. To turn right would take her east towards Haverstock Hill and the way she had come from London. But that was the route Cousin Edward must have taken. She turned west, into a desolate and unknown country somewhere north of St Marylebone.

Better the dangers you didn’t know than those you did.

It was only then that she realized that she had left behind the grey cloak in the hedge.

By the time Cat reached the coffee house, the light had almost gone from the day. Her clothes were filthy and her dress was torn. She was also soaking wet, because on her way back the fine weather had given way to rain and she lacked even the protection of a thin cloak. Since leaving Primrose Hill she must have walked seven or eight miles. She wasn’t sure which had been worse – the wild and inhospitable country she had passed through, or the streets on the outskirts of London, with their roaming population of predatory poor.

Her mind was full of a shifting fog that poisoned thought. Underneath it, she glimpsed from time to time the outlines of a terrible knowledge: the red halo – she had killed the wrong man. She had wanted Cousin Edward dead, not Sir Denzil.

But he should not have kept her from fleeing. He should not have handled her so roughly, as Edward had done.

The front window of the coffee house gave a glimpse of the long room beyond. The candles were lit, and the fire burned brightly in the hearth. Even at this hour, it was full of customers, all men of course, talking, drinking and reading newspapers. The proprietor, his hands folded over his fat belly, was talking with one of his customers. The servants moved up and down the long tables with their trays.

Trembling, she went down the passage at the side of the coffee house to the back door in the yard. The mistress of the house was in the kitchen. She was giving directions to the boy who ran messages and summoned hackney coaches and chairs for the gentlemen. Her eyes widened when she saw Cat.

‘Where in God’s name have you been? Do you know what time it is?’

‘I’m sorry, mistress. I was lost.’

‘You can’t see him in that state. Go and make yourself decent. Hurry.’

Fear seized her by the throat and she gasped for breath. Cousin Edward? She forced the words out: ‘See who?’

‘Master Hakesby, of course. He’s been waiting for you nigh on an hour.’

Relief ran through her like wine. She curtsied and went upstairs to the little room she shared with the maids. She tried to brush at least some of the filth from her damp dress, washed her hands and face, tidied her hair, and exchanged her collar for a new one. When she went downstairs, the mistress told her that she would find Master Hakesby in the booth at the back of the coffee house.

‘See if he needs anything more,’ she said. ‘You might as well make yourself useful.’

Her head lowered, she went into the long room and made her way through the crowd. The air was thick with tobacco smoke and the fumes of coffee. As she passed one table, she heard a man say, ‘It is difficult to comprehend, is it not? All that blood.’ She hugged herself and walked more quickly.

Master Hakesby was alone at his table, tucked away from the noise and the crush. He was reading a newspaper, huddled in his cloak, his wide-brimmed hat low over his face.

She stood beside him and curtsied. ‘I ask your pardon for keeping you waiting, sir.’

‘Granted.’

Master Hakesby looked up at her. For the first time she saw his face. But it wasn’t Master Hakesby. It was her father.

I
HESITATED ON
the threshold, wondering for a moment if I had been shown into a different apartment from the one I had seen before. Behind me, the servant coughed, as if to nudge me forward. It was the man I had seen on my previous visit, with the soldierly bearing and the face blighted by the pox.

The curtains were already drawn across the windows. The withdrawing room of the house in Cradle Alley had been transformed into a luxurious cave. A large coal fire burned in the grate. Candles added their heat to the fire’s – there must have been two or three score of them burning, standing on tables and fixed to wall brackets. The extravagance took my breath away.

Mistress Alderley sat beside the fireplace, with her face shielded from the warmth. The light was kind to her, returning youth to her face. Once again, she seemed alone, without even her maid in attendance.

The heavy leather screen still hid the corner of the drawing room. I could not help glancing at it as I stood in the doorway.

When the servant had retired, closing the door behind him, she looked up at me, and away, as if she needed to be sure of my identity but had no desire to linger on my face for its own sake. ‘For God’s sake,’ she said. ‘We are quite alone. You may look, if you want to make sure.’

I took her at her word. There was a door behind the screen, but nothing else apart from a spider’s web across the top right-hand corner of the doorway.

‘You don’t trust me,’ she said in a softer voice. I began to protest but she cut me off with a wave of her hand. ‘You’re wise, Master Marwood. Take nothing for granted in this world. If I’ve learned nothing else, I’ve learned that.’

‘Madam, I did not mean to doubt you. But—’

‘The last time we met here,’ she interrupted, ‘I was not entirely my own mistress. Pray be seated.’

I took the settle again, which was placed at some distance from that roaring fire. We sat in silence for a moment. The casements rattled in their frames. Mingling with the smell of the fire and candlewax was a hint of the perfume she had worn in the coach on Thursday. She had offered me a seat, so she did not see me as a servant. But she had not offered me refreshment, so she did not count me even approximately as an equal. I was something uncertain in her scale of things. An anomaly.

A clock chimed three o’clock. Silk rustled as she stirred in her chair.

‘Have you heard the news?’ she said.

‘The whole town has heard it, madam. Sir Denzil Croughton murdered.’

‘Yesterday morning, in broad daylight on Primrose Hill – and practically in front of my stepson and his servant, and our mastiffs as well. Poor Sir Denzil bled to death in Edward’s arms. But no one saw the murderer. Not even a glimpse.’

‘Did he speak before he died?’

She shook her head. ‘He tried, but the words were unintelligible. He was taken quite by surprise – his sword was still in its sheath, and his pistols in their holsters.’

‘Had he enemies?’

‘Perhaps. But who would have known to find him there? My husband has offered a reward for the arrest and conviction of the murderer.’ Her lips twisted into a smile. ‘My maid says the servants think our family is cursed. That death stalks us.’

‘It’s hard not to suspect a pattern, madam.’

‘Behind all these deaths? Yes.’ She lowered her voice: ‘I know the King has spoken to you about this. He believes Thomas Lovett must be at the heart of it. And my poor niece has been dragged into it. I suspect she knew that he had returned to England. I think she ran away from Barnabas Place to join him, rather than marry Sir Denzil.’

The settle creaked beneath my weight as I shifted my position. This was frankness indeed.

‘I hoped you would find a trace of her in Suffolk,’ she went on.

‘I found nothing certain, madam.’

She looked up sharply, as if catching at a hope. ‘But you found something? About Catherine?’

‘No – but possibly about her father. I think a man might have been concealed by an old woman, a servant’s widow, who lives in a wood near Coldridge. Afterwards I was ill for several days, too sick to move. I believe she had me poisoned, to give the man time to escape.’

‘Master Chiffinch knows? And the King?’

I nodded.

‘That’s all they care about,’ Mistress Alderley said with a touch of anger. ‘This man Lovett. They don’t give a fig for Catherine, except as bait. Find her, they think, and they find him.’

I wondered if Chiffinch or the King had told her that Master Alderley had contrived to sell Coldridge. I dared not ask. I was on delicate ground. However one looked at it, there was something underhand about the sale, even if Alderley had had his niece’s best interests at heart.

‘I have a kindness for her,’ she went on, plucking the words one by one as if they did not come easily to her. ‘She is a child still, an innocent. She is not like a girl of her age should be at all – she cares nothing for a new dress or a fine gentleman. All she wants to do is scribble away at drawing buildings that never were and never could be. I cannot help feeling …’

‘What, madam?’

She glared at me. ‘If you must know, I blame myself for her flight.’ She took a deep breath and went on in a quieter voice: ‘No, that’s foolish, of course – I merely meant that I might possibly have prevented it. Catherine tried to confide in me on the evening before she left and I – well, I did not brush her aside exactly, but I turned the talk to other things. I knew she wasn’t happy at the prospect of her marriage, and she did not care for Sir Denzil. But I thought time would mend all, and besides it was such a splendid match for her, and her uncle wished for it so much. And now, the longer she is away, the more I feel certain that some terrible fate has befallen her. Indeed, how could it be otherwise? She’s so alone. So defenceless. And God is my witness, sir, I know what that feels like.’

Mistress Alderley turned her head away from me.

I thought that she had revealed more of herself than she had intended. ‘Perhaps she has found her father and they have fled abroad. Perhaps—’

‘Do you think I haven’t thought of all this?’ she burst out. ‘But “perhaps” is not good enough. Besides, her father is no fit guardian for her.’

‘What has Master Lovett done, madam?’

‘Why, he’s a Regicide. Everyone knows that.’

I nodded, as if satisfied, but I knew from what the King had said that there was something more to Lovett, something even worse.

I said, ‘What does Master Alderley say?’

Again, her lips twisted. ‘Nothing of consequence. He keeps his own counsel but I believe he has no more idea where she is than I do. He – he is very angry with her, I’m afraid. He was quite determined on this marriage, and he feared her running off would ruin all.’

Now of course it no longer mattered. Sir Denzil was no longer in a position to marry anyone. It occurred to me that his death might not be wholly unwelcome to Master Alderley, who would no longer have to account for his unauthorized sale of his niece’s dowry.

‘Our dogs are savage brutes, you know,’ she went on, seemingly at a tangent. ‘My husband cannot take chances, not with his strong room on the premises. They have the run of the house at night, and during the day they are mostly chained up. They would kill a stranger they found as soon as look at him. But they are well trained – they are perfectly restrained with our friends, once they know them, and to the family they are as meek as lambs.’

I remembered my first visit to the Alderleys’ house, when the mastiffs had licked the blood in the yard with such enthusiasm after Jem’s broken body had been dragged away.

She glanced sideways at me through her lashes. ‘One of them broke loose on Primrose Hill. Something excited it. Edward had dismounted. The dog wouldn’t answer to his call. So Sir Denzil rode after it. When Edward got there, Sir Denzil was dying. The dog was nearby. Its leash was looped over a branch. It must have seen the murder.’

I saw her implication. ‘Could the leash have snagged on the branch by accident?’

‘How should I know?’ she said. ‘I wasn’t there.’

The touch of petulance took me unawares and made me smile. It made her seem like an ordinary mortal, and I liked her the more for it.

‘It’s no laughing matter,’ she snapped.

‘I beg your pardon, madam. So if the leash was looped intentionally over the branch, that suggests …’

My voice tailed away. She ran the tip of her forefinger over her forehead. I stared at the floor. Anywhere but at her.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It suggests that the dog knew the murderer. More than that, it suggests the dog would obey him.’

Him.
The word lay between us and made others.
Or her
.

‘But that’s obviously nonsense,’ she said. ‘No one at Barnabas Place would wish Sir Denzil dead. So the leash must have caught on the branch by accident.’