The Hogarth Conspiracy (2 page)

I was almost insensible with fear. I had to get away—and I had to take the baby—a boy, as I now saw—with me. Now! Before anyone came back. Perhaps the doctor had already sent for the undertaker; perhaps even now he was walking down the alley. Maybe someone from the public house above would come down for more beer and find me—and the child.

Wrapping the rags around the infant, I hurried towards the steps with my bundle. Tentatively I stepped into the street. As I moved further into the alleyway, I looked around me, but the priest and the doctor were long gone. Overhead, a swollen white belly of moon followed my progress as I skittered through the ginnels and crossed Drury Lane. I kept the child pressed close as I passed drunks and road sweepers, lurking around the shortcuts I had known from childhood.

Unnerved and scared, I expected to be challenged, expected to be stopped. And then what fate would befall me? If they caught me, if they realised what I'd done, my life would be forfeit. They had thought that Polly Gunnell's child was dead, but he was still alive: the bastard son of the Prince of Wales. The child who had survived against all the odds, whose existence was a threat to the most powerful figures in the land.

And I had that child. The child who desperate, ambitious, and ruthless men would seek to find and kill.

But only if they knew he had survived.

Only weeks earlier I had had an unexpected late-night visitor: Frederick, Prince of Wales, was ushered in by my startled servant. His manner was exceedingly courteous, almost as though I had been the royal and he the commoner.

“Master Hogarth,” he had begun. “I have something to ask of you, a favour, if you will, and, of course, your absolute confidence.”

I had immediately nodded agreement. Who refused the Prince of Wales?

“This concerns Polly Gunnell,” he continued, producing her name like a face card, sure to win the hand. “Dear Polly, your model, is carrying my child.”

There had always been royal bastards, but seldom had their fathers admitted parentage.

“I think you know of our liaison?”

“Polly has not referred to it directly.”

“But you guessed, of course—otherwise there would have been no painting.”

His Royal Highness had seemed to bear me no ill will, had even been—dare I think it?—amused by my audacity.

“I need to give you something,” he said, whereupon a substantial gold signet ring was dropped into my hand. It bore the inscription

To my secret child, from his father, Frederick, Prince of Wales.

Stunned, I gazed at him. “This is not wise, sir. This is proof that—” “As was the painting.” He held my look. “I ask you to watch over Polly. She has no family, and she trusts you, Master Hogarth. If the child is a boy, you understand what that could mean?”

I nodded mutely.

“Polly was under my protection, but yesterday she disappeared,” he said, then gripped my sleeve, imploring me—ME, William Hogarth—for help. “If she comes to you, assist her. Protect her. And keep this ring for the child. It is a testimony, proof of its lineage. Promise me, sir, you will do this?”

“I swear it.”

Satisfied, he had then nodded and left.

But I hadn't kept my word, because she had not come to me, I had not seen Polly again. Until tonight, when what I saw was only her bloody corpse….

Afraid, I kept moving, increasing my speed, threading my way through the night crowds, passing a gin seller and ducking out of the way of a hackney coming quick from St James's Street. I knew that at any moment someone could step out from an alley or a tavern doorway. Any man, every man. Some thug, some priest, some sergeant at arms, and ask, “What's that, Master Hogarth? What's that you're carrying? What's that, Master Hogarth?”

It's flesh and blood. It's breathing, it's alive. It's why Polly Gunnell is dead and my life is threatened. It's the reason I'm running and have to keep running.

Out of breath, I paused momentarily and leaned against a wall, looking around me. I had to get home, get help. I had to get the child to safety. Although near exhaustion, I pushed myself on and then began to run again, dipping out of the beam of an idiot moon and the scrutiny of lighted doorways.

But no one saw me. No one saw William Hogarth that night. No one saw me panting as I finally made my way to my house. Scrabbling for my keys, the man known to have the wickedest brush in Europe unlocked the door and slammed it closed. Expecting at any moment for it to be breached, I slid the bolts and, shaking, clung to the infant in my arms.

The child was warming up against me. I could feel its heartbeat, feel the slow return of life—and I knew that the murderers must never know they had failed. All that must be reported back was that William Hogarth, painter and engraver, had organised and paid for the burial of his onetime model Polly Gunnell. And her dead bastard.

No one must know the child survived and certainly not know who its father was: such a revelation would bring only tragedy, the reverberations of which could undermine history.

Remembering the hidden picture, I determined to hide the signet ring with it. For a fleeting moment I was shamed by my own conceit, considered destroying the damned work. What had been merely a satire, an ill-aimed joke, had found a target so dangerous and volatile it had already resulted in murder.

Only I had caused it. Only I could make amends.

It was the year of Our Lord 1732.

Part One

One

S
TUMBLING IN THE AISLE OF THE PRIVATE PLANE,
S
IR
O
LIVER
P
ETERS
grabbed the back of the nearest seat and righted himself. He wondered for a moment if his medication was making him unsteady as he concentrated on making his way along the narrow aisle to the restroom. Entering, he leaned against the sink gratefully, catching his breath.

Over the last few months he had hidden his illness so adeptly that no one—not even his wife, Sonia—knew about it. His weight loss he had attributed to his new gym membership, his shortened hours at the gallery to a lull in sales that nobody had anticipated. His tailor, in his confidence, had discreetly altered his clothes to conceal any telltale slackness, and a smaller shirt-collar size prevented the giveaway gape at the neck.

But in truth cancer had infiltrated Sir Oliver Peters's plush life with all the viciousness of an arsonist setting fire to a child's nursery. The disease had attacked suddenly, hijacking the confines of his good luck with squatter's rights and aiming to take over each organ consecutively as it worked its way through the rotting majesty of his body.

Hearing a noise from beyond the door, Oliver stared into the mirror and winced. The noise was faint, but it was the unmistakable sound of sex, coming from the back of the plane and just audible through the restroom wall. There was female laughter too, then a man moaning. Oliver turned on the faucet to try to drown out the sound. He had never liked Bernie Freeland, finding his Australian camaraderie at odds with his own British reserve, and suspected that Freeland's friendliness covered a brittle, unstable personality. Admired as a hedonist and a determined collector, Freeland had bludgeoned his way into the art world, using connections bought by his wealth. Bullish and affectionate at the same time, he had sucked the life out of lesser personalities and intimidated many dealers.

The Australian's sexual greed was legendary. His private plane was a personalized brothel, servicing him as he traveled the world. From London to New York, the Far East to Dubai, and back to his home in Sydney, Bernie Freeland conducted his business with frequent interruptions for sexual gratification, using Viagra for longer trips and vials of amyl nitrate for a shorter hit—even, on occasion, crystal meth.

All this Oliver Peters knew from the gossip over the last decade. And all this was the reason why he normally never would have accepted a journey in Bernie Freeland's plane. The cancellation of the flight home from Hong Kong and the prospect of waiting over twenty-four hours for another had persuaded Oliver—feeling weak and desperate to keep his illness a secret—to accept the proffered invitation.

Once on board, he had found two other art dealers availing themselves of Freeland's generosity. Both men were known to him. Kit Wilkes was the illegitimate son of James Holden, MP, and Lim Chang, a Chinese dealer in ceramics, was an enthusiastic buyer of British art. Oliver had suspected that Lim Chang was as keen as he was to get back to London and as uncomfortable with his surroundings. But Kit Wilkes had been another matter. Sleek as a water vole, with pale green eyes and a full Cupid's bow of a mouth, Wilkes was a languid bisexual whose constant travels and hops over the equator made short work of the world. Often accompanied, Wilkes paraded his boys in their Ralph Lauren uniforms or his nymphets in all their prim pubescence, but he was more of a voyeur than an active participant. Wilkes had an obsession with hygiene and was known to demand a full examination of every male or female he hired; a certain Texan, Dr. Eli Fountain, provided the service from his offices in Wimpole Street. No one slept with Kit Wilkes who hadn't been examined thoroughly first.

A jolt in the plane made Oliver grab the edge of the sink to steady himself. Despite his reputation, Kit Wilkes was traveling alone—had even refused an invitation to watch Bernie Freeland and the three girls on board, preferring to try to sleep, resting his narrow head against one of the plane's windows. At one moment, caught in sunlight, his gaze had flickered briefly over to Oliver, his green eyes momentarily as yellow as the skin of a gecko.

The plane jolted again. Oliver heard the sound, louder now, of the women laughing and screaming playfully.

“Why don't you have some fun? I won't tell anyone,” Bernie Freeland had said earlier, pointing through an open door to the girls sitting on the huge divan in a cabin that was decked out as a bedroom.

Wretchedly embarrassed, Oliver had smiled his regal smile and shaken his head. “I don't think so.”

“No one would know.”

But they would, you bastard
, Oliver thought, suspecting that Bernie Freeland might have the bedroom taped, every sound recorded. What a splendid way to secure business: provide the services of a call girl to sweeten the deal. Or, if the client was unwilling to deal, blackmail him into submission afterward.

“No thank you, Bernie. The lift home is more than enough.”

He had seen Bernie Freeland's expression shift as he looped one arm around Oliver and guided him to a seat beside the bar at the far end of the plane. Surprised, Oliver had felt the weight of the Australian's arm and winced inwardly, wondering if Freeland could feel his loss of body tone, the giveaway wasting of muscle.

But Freeland's mind had been elsewhere. Sipping a tonic water, Oliver had glanced around. Kit Wilkes was asleep, and Lim Chang was talking to one of the call girls, a redhead perched on the side of his seat.

“You okay?”

Smiling stiffly, Oliver had nodded. “Fine, thank you.”

“You buy anything in Hong Kong?”

“No.” Oliver studied the man's broad, tanned face, the dark mustache that disguised a corrected hair lip. “Did you?”

“A Corot. Nothing else.” He jerked his head toward the private compartment, knowing he was embarrassing his companion and enjoying it. “That redhead, Annette, gives the best blow job in Europe. And the brunette in the back is at this moment going down on the other girl.”

His expression unreadable, Oliver had stared at the Australian.
I'm being eaten alive by cancer
, he had thought,
medicated so heavily that sex is a memory. I can't get an erection even if I wanted to. So I can look at you with your big, pumped body and your private plane—and not envy you in the least.

But he hadn't said it.

“You're married, aren't you?”

Oliver had nodded.

“Are you happy with her?”

“Of course.”

“
Of course
,” Freeland repeated. “I've got no one to share my life with. Well, whores, but no one special. And I'm thinking that if this plane crashed now, no one would really care if I died.”

Oliver had been more than a little worried that the conversation might slip into mawkishness.

“I'm sure you have many friends.”

“In
this
business?” Bernie had exclaimed. “You are fucking joking! You can't have friends in the art world. Too many people trying to get their hands in the same till at the same time. I was offered a Turner in Dubai—
Dubai
, of all bloody places—but before I got back to the broker, he'd sold it. Whole deal completed in an hour.” He sniffed. “That's technology for you. That son of a bitch was on his BlackBerry faster than the naked eye could follow.”