“I see.” I pretended to be stung. “Your father then. He is a man of wisdom.”
Donata brightened. “Yes, dear Papa would help if I asked. Very well, I will do what I can and prepare to remove to Oxfordshire by the week’s end.” Her smile faded and her severe expression returned. “But I am not going alone. You will finish your business and quit London by that time as well. If your Mr. Eden has not been cleared by then, you will leave it to Sir Montague or Sir Nathaniel to sort out.”
I hesitated. My greatest wish was to see Donata and our children safely away. I had been through hell and back around the world in the army, my career ending when French soldiers amused themselves by torturing me. I had survived all that, which made me tend to dismiss personal danger. The things I’d gone through since returning to London to convalesce had hardened me further.
Donata’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll not go without you, Gabriel. That is my condition.”
I drew myself up. “I am your husband, Donata.”
“I believe you recall how obedient I was to Breckenridge. I at least respect you, but not when you are being a fool. We both leave on Saturday morning.”
I usually lost arguments with Donata. Sometimes it took longer for me to admit defeat, and sometimes I had to admit it directly.
I gave her a decided nod. “Very well. The end of the week.”
She made me give her my word before I left her.
I RETIRED to the library downstairs and wrote to Sir Montague and to Sir Gideon Derwent, a reformer. Sir Gideon was always interested in what criminal activities I pursued, and he’d been much help in the past. I also told him of Eden and how I wanted to help him.
I addressed the letter to Sir Gideon to his country home in Kent. I had heard that his wife, who was consumptive, was not well. That kind lady had proved more robust than most thought, but in the end, she would succumb, which saddened me. I sent the letter to Sir Gideon anyway, knowing he used good works to divert him from his sorrow—his wife encouraged him in this.
I preferred to speak to Thompson of the River Police in person, so I wrote him a note that I would travel to Wapping and call on him this afternoon. If I would keep my promise to Donata, I’d need to begin right away. I handed the note to Bartholomew, who’d brought in a tray with bread, cheese, fruit, and coffee as I worked.
After finishing my letters and the brief repast, I found Brewster—still sitting in the downstairs hall but now slurping coffee—and set off.
“Going straight back to the docks, are we?” Brewster asked as he followed me out. “Where His Nibs’ enemy lies in wait?”
“Mr. Creasey could have made good on his declaration that he was able to kill me, but he did not. Perhaps he doesn’t think me worth the bother.”
“He’s biding his time,” Brewster said darkly. “Mark me words.”
I had asked Hagen to drive us once more, knowing Donata would not be happy if I took a hackney, even with Brewster to guard me. Hagen, always competent, had the carriage quickly prepared and at the front door.
Brewster refused to ride inside this time and took his seat on the back of the coach. I had wanted to ask him more about Creasey, but I would pin him down later.
We traversed the streets back to the City and continued around the large bulk of the Tower, its golden crenelated walls and round turrets shutting out the common folk.
From there we passed the Royal Mint and threaded our way back to the water, where masts of ships gathered like a leafless forest. The warehouses surrounding the London Docks rose in a bulwark around which Hagen steered the coach. On Wapping Dock, not far from there, we halted at the offices of the Thames River Police.
I’d ventured to this house before, when Mr. Thompson had asked my opinion of a case he had wanted to solve, one that had long grown cold. I had been pleased to help, and together we’d discovered a killer.
Peter Thompson, a long, lean man whose frayed clothes grew more threadbare as the years passed, met me outside the coach once I descended.
“Captain Lacey,” he greeted me in his slow and careful way. “I received your message. Though you never said so, I suppose you want me to show you the body of Mr. Warrilow. If you’ll come with me.”
Light-brown eyes twinkling, Thompson stepped back into the house, and I could only follow.
CHAPTER 6
T hompson took me through the main offices and out the back door to a narrow street that climbed northward from the river.
When I’d visited Thompson a year or so ago, he’d led me to a cellar in an outbuilding to show me a skeletal body that had been fished from the Thames. Today he walked away from the river entirely. Brewster came close behind me, his breath loud in my ear.
We hadn’t gone far before Thomson halted in front of a squat, brick abode in a line of similar homes. This house had a door and a window on the first floor, two shuttered windows above that, and two more on the top story.
Thompson stepped up to the door and rapped on it. The road’s incline here was steep, so that the window in the room next to the door was almost level with the pavement.
A woman with a long apron covering her gown, her graying hair tucked into a large mobcap, opened the door and peered out. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Thompson. Himself is in the middle of a surgery, but if you’ll sit yourself down, he’ll be out directly.”
She ushered us into the front room, whose window did indeed view the cobbles outside and the boots and horses’ hooves that moved along the road.
The woman, who introduced herself to me as Mrs. Clay, waved us to seats and then brought us tea, so weak and watery it could barely be called such. Brewster drank his while he stood at the window, watching the passers-by with a wary gaze.
“Clay is a local surgeon when he isn’t assisting coroners,” Thompson explained when Mrs. Clay had closed the door and left us alone. He sipped the tea with rapt concentration, as though he drank ambrosia. “Amputates limbs, stitches up wounds, pulls teeth.”
From somewhere in the back of the house came a howl of anguish, the cry of a full-grown man in agony. Brewster swung around, and I flinched, memories returning of the surgeon who’d poked at my shattered knee and measured it amiably against his saw. I’d managed to banish most of those recollections, but they occasionally haunted me in restless dreams.
Thompson grinned. “Never fear, Captain. If he’s screaming, he’s likely all right. The very badly injured make little noise.”
This hardly made me feel better. More screams followed, which eventually trailed off into muffled groans. Over this, came a deep male voice. “Keep the poultice on it and you’ll be right as rain. Once it heals up, you’ll forget all about it.”
We heard shambling footsteps in the hall then the house’s front door opened and banged shut. A man stumbled past the window, pressing a wadded cloth against his right cheek.
Moments later, Mrs. Clay entered the sitting room, followed by a small, portly man with a beaming face. He wore a white apron, like a butcher’s, which was stained with blood.
“Mr. Thompson,” the man said with gladness, his voice larger than his person. “What a pleasure to see you again. Which body did you want to have a look at?”
Thompson and I both rose to greet the man. Thompson indicated me. “This is Captain Lacey. We’re here to view Mr. Warrilow.”