Daughters of Night Read online

  The parquet floor was smooth against the girl’s bare feet. Hannah, the first housemaid, hadn’t passed inspection when she’d come here a month ago, but then Hannah had a birthmark on her breast and a missing tooth.

  ‘What trade are you in?’ Mrs Havilland asked. ‘A milliner? A maid?’

  ‘Maid, madam.’

  ‘Here in London?’

  ‘Yes, madam. In Cheapside.’

  ‘Do you have family nearby?’

  ‘I have no family, madam. At least, none I ever knew.’

  Mrs Havilland smiled. ‘Oh, we like orphans here. How about your employer? Is he the sort who would come looking? Cause us trouble?’

  ‘No, madam. I don’t think he’d care.’

  Mrs Havilland had been toying with a long silver hook. Now she pushed it into her hair to scratch her scalp. The girl wondered if it was lice or mice that troubled her.

  ‘How old are you, child?’

  ‘Fifteen, madam.’

  ‘You could pass for thirteen, maybe even twelve. Never younger. We want no trouble from Bow Street, you understand?’

  ‘Yes, madam.’ Did the question mean she had passed muster? ‘The men say I have a bold tongue, madam. I know how to serve a drop of sauce.’

  ‘No.’ Mrs Havilland’s tone was sharp. ‘I don’t want sauce. As you were. Yes, madam. No, madam.’ She took another long, assessing look at the girl’s body. ‘Do you know what it is we do here?’

  ‘Yes, madam. I think so.’

  ‘Do you think you could do that?’

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  ‘Then we will try you out. But your name won’t do. Let us see if we can’t come up with something better.’ Mrs Havilland’s eye fell on a book that lay on the marquetry table at her elbow. ‘Can you read?’

  ‘Yes, madam. They taught me at the orphanage. I was good at my books.’

  Mrs Havilland pointed to the volume with her scratcher. ‘Have you read it?’

  ‘No, madam, but I have heard of it. She is a maidservant too? The girl in the book?’

  ‘Pamela Andrews. Her master was a country squire. He wanted her, but she wouldn’t let him have her.’ Her manicured finger underscored the book’s secondary title. ‘Virtue Rewarded. Are you virtuous, child?’

  Utterly confused – wasn’t a lack of virtue the point? – the girl tripped over her answer: ‘Yes, madam. No. I’m not sure, madam.’

  Mrs Havilland smiled, as if the girl had said something clever. ‘Take this book. Learn your part. Play it to perfection. And you’ll answer to no other name but Pamela. Not while you’re here.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘AMBROSE KNEW,’ MORDECHAI said. ‘Back then, when he introduced you to the prostitute. He must have done. Gad, what was he thinking?’

  They were seated in his glossy red coach-and-six heading home from the magistrate’s house to Mayfair. Mordechai had lit a pipe, and Caro pulled the window down with a bang. Her ginger comfits were doing nothing to settle her stomach. She leaned against the leather seat, fanning herself.

  ‘Of course Ambrose knew,’ she said. ‘It probably amused him. To introduce one of his harlots as a lady of quality. Watch us fawn over her.’

  ‘It is unconscionable. His own sister.’

  The carriage rocked as they rounded a sedan chair. The Strand was busy with traffic, the foot pavement jostling with pedestrians. From the windows of the milliners and glovers, pretty shop girls eyed the passing gentlemen. Now and then, between the shops, loomed a vast survivor of the old brick palaces that had once lined this stretch of the river. Just now they were passing Amberley House, home to Lord March and his parents, the Earl and Countess of Amberley.

  ‘You didn’t mention Lord March was there when we talked before,’ Mordechai said. ‘Was it him? The gentleman you were meeting in the bower?’

  ‘I wasn’t meeting anyone. I was taking the air, as I told you.’

  ‘Harry will hear of it. I might keep it out of the newspapers, but word will get around regardless. When they learn the murdered woman was a whore, the comparisons will invite themselves. You’re not to visit Vauxhall again until Harry comes home.’

  She stared at her brother, outraged. ‘I’m not going to shut myself away. I haven’t done anything wrong. It’s time you believed me.’

  He grunted. ‘We can only hope they don’t think you were meeting that Jewish lamplighter.’

  If only you knew, she thought – and by God, you may do yet. Then you’ll understand the meaning of a family scandal.

  She turned to watch the bustle around Charing Cross. St Martin’s striking three, the whores already out in force. They dipped plumed hats at the cavalry officers coming and going from the Royal Mews, flashing their ankles. Caro thought about her encounter with Lucia at Carlisle House, just three days ago. Her small brown eyes, wide and sincere. ‘I can help you, dearest Caro. If you’ll only let me.’

  Caro had taken that offer in good faith. Somehow, despite their scant acquaintance, she’d trusted Lucia. Except Lucia wasn’t Lucia, she was Lucy Loveless, a prostitute – so why had she offered Caro her help at all? Caro could come up with no answer other than human kindness, and somehow that troubled her most of all. If it hadn’t been for that act of kindness, then Lucy Loveless would never have set foot in that bower. Try as she might, Caro felt in some part responsible.

  ‘Did anybody ask about Ambrose at the exhibition?’ Mordechai asked, breaking in upon her thoughts.

  ‘Of course they asked. Nobody’s seen him in over a year. Everyone wants to know where he is.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘Switzerland, as we agreed. I implied he was chasing a woman.’

  ‘More gossip,’ Mordechai said darkly.

  ‘It is hardly the same. Ambrose is a man. His conduct need not be beyond reproach. More importantly, knowing our brother, people will believe it.’ A thought struck her then. ‘Sir Amos said Lucy Loveless sat for Jacobus Agnetti. Do you think that’s where Ambrose met her – at Agnetti’s house?’

  ‘It hardly matters now.’

  ‘Do you think the magistrate has talked to him? To Agnetti?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

  ‘I suspect he hasn’t. He didn’t seem to care at all. If Lucy had really been a contessa, he’d be out there now scouring the streets.’

  Mordechai closed his eyes to signal his limited patience for the topic. ‘I suppose dead prostitutes are ten a penny.’

  ‘They still deserve justice, do they not?’

  He didn’t reply and Caro mused fretfully: ‘I know I saw a letter in the bower. And Lucy knew her killer, I am sure of it. She was trying to tell me something, but she died before she could.’

  ‘Caroline,’ Mordechai said, in his patriarch’s voice, another act stolen from their father, ‘your little night in the bowers nearly cost your family dear. You risked making a laughing stock of your husband, and something altogether worse of yourself. If you mean to sit here worrying about something, let it be that.’

  *

  Gabriel hurled himself at her almost as soon as she’d walked in through the door of her Mayfair townhouse. Laughing, despite her mood, she swung him into the air, holding him close.

  ‘Dog, Mama.’ He barked. ‘Cat, Mama.’ He meowed.

  ‘Oh, aren’t you clever.’ Ignoring the hovering servants in the hall, she kissed him once, twice, three times to keep him safe. Not liking the kisses, he wriggled in her arms, squirming to get free, until she set him down. He ran off into the morning room, calling for his nursemaid, Mrs Graves.

  Caro removed her cloak and gloves and handed them to her butler. ‘Where are the mails, Pomfret?’

  ‘On your escritoire, Mrs Corsham. May Anna bring you a pot of tea?’

  ‘I’ll take tea with Gabriel in the nursery in just a moment.’

  Walking into the drawing room, she closed the door. Alone for the first time that day, she breathed deeply, battling her nausea. Everything felt turned on its head
. Lucia di Caracciolo, Lucy Loveless. All the emotions running amok inside of her – she struggled to make sense of them. You can’t afford to think of the murder now, she chided herself. You have problems enough of your own.

  Hastening to her escritoire, she picked up the little stack of letters that awaited her attention, identifying missives from friends, bills from tradesmen, invitations. Her despair mounted, as it had done every day for the past two weeks. No letter in her husband’s hand, saying he was on his way home. Why didn’t he write?

  It had been five months since Harry had packed his bags for the Continent, saying he’d be gone three months at most. They had parted on cordial terms, and he’d written regularly enough at first. Now there was only silence and she didn’t know why.

  Could he be ill? It was a possibility to which she kept returning, and yet if that was the case, then why hadn’t she been told? She’d made inquiries with Harry’s patron in the ministry, Nicholas Cavill-Lawrence, and had the distinct impression that she was being fobbed off. ‘The Americans are resting on their laurels.’ ‘The French are being stubborn.’ ‘Peace wasn’t built in a day, Caro, these things take time.’

  Except time was the one thing she didn’t have.

  She closed her eyes, refusing to give way to her tears, and the murder at Vauxhall edged back into her thoughts. All the troubling details wormed at her: the letter in the bower, the plague doctor’s mask, Lucy’s last words.

  Pressing a hand to her mouth, she suppressed a wrenching sob. ‘Harry,’ she whispered. ‘Please come home.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  PEREGRINE CHILD’S LAMB stew was pale and watery, the meat glistening with pearls of fat and gristle. He stirred it around listlessly, before pushing it aside.

  ‘I’m sorry, love,’ he said for the tenth time.

  ‘I told you. It’s fine.’

  Sophie Hardcastle gave him a tight smile. One of her abundant brown curls had sprung free, and she reached into the top of her stays where she kept her pins, stabbing one into her hair with forceful intent. Child reached out a hand to stroke her cheek, but she pulled away. It was definitely not fine.

  He’d planned to take her to a chophouse in Covent Garden which had a new French cook, and then on to the playhouse in Drury Lane. Finn Daley had put paid to that, and so they were sitting in a greasy Holborn watering hole, surrounded by drunk soldiers and penny-fuck whores. Child resisted the urge to put his head in his hands. The watch he’d retrieved from Jenny Wren had been hidden in his shoe, and thus had escaped Daley’s greedy clutches. He’d returned it to his client yesterday, for a commission of two and a half guineas, but that was dwindling fast, and he had no other jobs in the offing. Then there was the problem of Finn Daley’s forty-seven guineas. Two days had already passed. Only five left.

  He’d tried manoeuvring his apostles, borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, but he had so many creditors no one else would touch him. It was why he’d been forced to turn to Finn Daley in the first place. He’d ask Sophie for a loan, but she’d turned him down in the past. ‘Money is how lovers fall out, Perry. I’ve been there before.’

  None of it was his fault; that was the worst part. It had all gone so well when he’d first started out in London. He’d taken on a little debt, just to set himself up on his feet, but it was nothing he wouldn’t have been able to repay in time. His London connections had sent a few clients his way and, slowly, word had got around that Child was the thief-taker to go to when a gentleman was in a fix. Lost some compromising letters? Had a diamond necklace stolen? Want to trace an eloped daughter? Perry Child was your man. Little wonder his competitors had been so upset. Child was an interloper on their turf, and they’d clubbed together to work against him. Spreading rumours about his drunkenness and his murkier activities in Deptford. Soon his clients dwindled to a trickle and his debts had become a problem he could no longer ignore.

  Five days. And then Finn Daley would come looking for him again.

  He gave Sophie a wan smile. ‘As soon as I’m back in the game, I’ll take you to Drury Lane, I promise.’

  ‘No, Perry, that’s not going to work.’ Sophie tugged her silk shawl tighter around her ample bosom, and he gazed at her, concerned. It wasn’t like her to hold a grudge.

  ‘Then tell me what I can do to make it up to you.’

  ‘It’s not that.’ She sighed. ‘I was going to tell you later, but I didn’t want to spoil our night. I had word of my Sam’s ship yesterday. She’s been sighted off Southampton.’

  Sophie’s husband was First Officer of an Indiaman, gone for years at a time. The money was good, but Sophie got lonely. Hence Peregrine Child.

  ‘How long will he be in London?’

  ‘Six months, perhaps longer.’ She pressed her knuckles against his arm. ‘Don’t look like that. You knew the way it was.’

  He couldn’t deny that. It might even have been part of the attraction. They sat there a while longer, making stilted attempts at conversation, but the heart had gone out of their evening, and eventually Sophie rose, gathering her cloak.

  ‘I’d better be getting back to the children. You look after yourself, Perry.’ She tied her bonnet under her chin, while he mustered a smile. ‘And ease off on the wine, hey? The way you drink, you’ll be dead before you’re fifty.’

  Walk away and do it like you mean it. Child watched her go, and then called the tap-man over. Taking Sophie’s advice to heart, he swapped to gin. As he drank, he thought of his dead wife, Liz, wondering what she’d make of him if she could see him now. Not much, was his best bet, but then at least he wouldn’t be confounding her expectations. Liz had used to tell him to stop drinking too, but it wasn’t like he didn’t know. Why did women have to carp on so much about the bloody obvious?

  Much later, he walked home through the streets of Holborn. Drunken soldiers’ songs drifted up to him from the Fetter Lane taverns: Fuck the Americans! Fuck the French! Which was all very well, except everyone knew the war was lost, the colonies gone for good, the British broke and humiliated by their enemies. Child decided he was a fitting metaphor for his once-proud nation.

  He lived in a little court off Gray’s Inn Lane, on the first floor of a tall, narrow timber house with covered balconies sitting uneasily upon rusting brackets. A carriage was idling at the entrance to the court, and the coachman gave Child a contemptuous look as he fumbled for his key. His neighbours – legal clerks and other scriveners – kept respectable hours, and the landlord was too parsimonious to light the lamps in the halls after ten. So Child was forced to grope his way up the implausibly steep staircase, drawing to an abrupt halt when he made the turn on the landing and spotted two shadowy figures outside his door.

  In his time as magistrate, Child had sent many men to the gallows. He never knew who might step out of his past seeking a reckoning. His hand dropped to the pistol in the pocket of his greatcoat. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Mr Child?’ A woman’s voice, one that bespoke breeding and money and everything else Child resented at that moment.

  ‘I’m Child,’ he said. ‘You have the advantage of me, madam.’

  As she came forward, he caught a waft of expensive scent. In the half-light he could see she was very beautiful. She was looking at Child with a faint trace of disappointment. You and all, love, he thought. You and all.

  ‘My name is Caroline Corsham,’ she said. ‘I believe you know my husband, Captain Henry Corsham. A woman has been murdered, Mr Child, and I need your help.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHILD WATCHED MRS Corsham cast a dubious eye around his lodgings: at the threadbare furniture, the empty bottles, the cobwebs on the beams, the dirty plates. He’d opened a window to give the place an airing, but it just meant the odours of old sweat and liquor mingled with the rising stench of the Fleet Ditch. They were sitting at Child’s small round dining table, hastily cleared of the remnants of a kidney pudding from three nights ago. Mrs Corsham’s strapping ginger footman lurked near the door, incongruous as a b
eggar at a ball. He didn’t take his eye off Child for a moment.

  Mrs Corsham had just finished telling him about the prostitute she’d unwittingly befriended, and later found dying at Vauxhall Gardens. Child had read about the murder in the newspapers. The revelation in the evening editions that the victim had been a celebrated harlot had prompted a shift in tone. A carnal motive was implied, people could rest easy in their beds; no respectable woman was at risk.

  ‘My husband says you are good at what you do.’ Mrs Corsham sounded as though she was trying to convince herself. ‘He said that in his absence, if I needed help with any delicate matter, I should come to you.’

  Her cold, blue eyes travelled over his yellowed stockings and stained coat. Child longed for a drink to steady his thinking, but all he had was gin, which he didn’t think would convey the right impression. As she took his measure, so he took hers.

  Not yet thirty, but not far off. Her mahogany hair implausibly glossy and coiled. A rose silk gown stitched with seed-pearls and yards of golden lace that probably cost more than all Child’s debts combined. A narrow waist and a delicate, angular face gave the impression of fragility, belied by about three seconds in her company. Child had a natural distrust of beautiful women. His instinct was to please them, which was what they anticipated – and experience had taught him that they could turn nasty if you did not. They also had a way of looking at a man, reducing him to the sum of his inadequate parts. Yet the Corshams were rich, and whatever this woman’s arcane motives for giving a damn about this dead whore, if some of that money was to find its way into Peregrine Child’s pocket, then he wasn’t one to look a pretty mare in the mouth.

  ‘I was magistrate of Deptford for over ten years,’ he said. ‘By comparison, your London villains are a stroll around the garden.’

  ‘Does that include murderers?’

  Child inclined his head. ‘Murder is a more complicated proposition than theft, but I’ve caught my share of killers.’