Page 45 of A Proposition for the Comte
‘Flavell spoke to one of the guards who brought food to the prisoners. He said the man in the bottom cell was dead as a doornail with froth at his mouth come morning.’
‘Someone wanted him gone,’ Aurelian said as he looked across at Peter Flavell.
‘Badly. Douglas Cummings visited him once.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘A woman. Mrs Antoinette Herbert. She lives in Kensington for I followed her home. A lady of means by the looks and most agitated.’
‘You have the address?’
‘Here.’ Flavell brought a small scrap of paper from his pocket and gave it to him.
‘Who was he? The man in gaol?’
‘Stephen Miller. A jeweller. He had a small shop in Holborn but he had been Dragoon in the Peninsular Campaign under Moore in Corunna so he was handy with a weapon.’
And cognisant of the properties of gold, Lian thought, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
‘There’s something else, too.’ Frank Welsh spoke now. ‘It seems you have stirred up a nest of hornets. The gaol cell of Miller’s might very well be yours to occupy next.’
He smiled. ‘I’d like to see them try it. What of Chichester and the death of George Taylor? Did anything more come of that?’
‘Taylor was hit by a carriage on the Southern Road. He was another jeweller with a shop in the centre of the city. A well-heeled one, too, by the size of the purse that was found upon him.’
‘Not robbery, then?’
‘Well, his luggage is missing.’
‘Luggage?’
‘Taylor had been to Chichester and was on his way back to London, by horse. His steed was found wandering a mile or so up the road and the pub master where he’d been staying was certain he had left with luggage.’
The smell of the fire had reached this place now, the wet scent of damp ash and smouldering embers. At the Austrian Embassy on Chausée d’Antin, Lian had pulled the lifeless body of the Ambassador’s wife out of a salon filled with flame and thick black roiling smoke. Fire gave him the feeling of a hollow pit in his stomach, but so did the unexplained deaths of Miller in the gaol and Taylor just outside Chichester.
Desperation caused mistakes and someone willing to kill had a lot to hide. These dead men were not thugs, but jewellers and gentlemen. The man in the boarding house in Brompton Place had been of the same ilk with his soft body and unmarked hands and there had been a full purse in his pocket, too. Men like this should have been enjoying the fruits of their labours rather than dying ignominiously and in violence, yet someone or something was paying them to take a stand.
Douglas Cummings was not quite as he seemed and neither was the jeweller Whitely. This was another worry. Could all these deaths mean that the fortune of French gold was still intact or at least that someone believed it to be? Perhaps the person who had it wanted no others to talk? No links. No strands of culpability. A clear mandate to spend it and never be bothered again.
Violet was the daughter of a jeweller and the wife of a man with French sympathies who had been sent the gold in the first place. Perhaps she knew too much, had seen too much?
‘There’s something else you need to know, too, guv.’ Peter Flavell lowered his voice. ‘The woman in the park you saved yesterday was also the one who Douglas Cummings went to see around noon today. He was there for a while. The Minister, Charles Mountford, was there a bit earlier.’
This did not make any sense. Why would Violet meet Cummings at home on the day after an attempt on her life and especially if Mountford had visited an hour or two before him?
The wrong side of the law in a land that was not his own was always going to be a difficult place to operate in. Someone would make a mistake soon, he knew they would and he had to be ready. He just prayed that it was not going to be Violet Addington.
Hours later Lian watched the Addington town house from a small distance, sliding into the moonlight through the overhanging trees to hide his presence. The same wind that had ignited the shack on the south bank of the Thames blew here, the force of it lifting the old brown leaves from the streets and sending them scurrying down the road towards Beauchamp Place. He glanced at the fob watch at his waist.
Eleven thirty.
Late enough for the house to have gone to bed. He moved forward, waiting till Eli Tucker, the largest of the guards, came closer before speaking.
‘Have there been any problems?’
‘My God. You gave me a hell of a fright, sir, appearing out of thin air like that. But, no, there hasn’t been any sign of trouble.’
‘Stay on here, then, until you hear otherwise from me. No one else but me. Do you understand? For I am the one paying your wages and I need you here until I say that I don’t.’
