Chapter Five
M itchell returned to his flat at seven o’clock that night. Addington had not left his house, and since he couldn’t watch the baron twenty-four hours a day, he decided to pick up the surveillance tomorrow afternoon. After unlocking the door, Mitchell entered the front hall and started when he found an older lady scrubbing the tiled floor.
“Mind where you step!” she called out.
“Mrs. Evans?”
“Aye, that’s me. Sergeant Simpson, I presume. Walk close to the stairs, as I haven’t done that part of the floor yet. You’ll find the doctor in his study. I just took him a tea tray. You’ll be hungry, I’ll be bound. I’ve got a roast chicken in the oven as well.”
The woman spoke so rapidly that Mitchell could hardly understand what she said. “Thank you.”
A few minutes later, he found Drew in his study. The room was already set up, with his diplomas on the wall and various medical books neatly displayed on the shelves.
“Good evening, Mitchell. I imagine you met Mrs. Evans.” Drew smiled.
Mitchell removed his hat and coat and flung them to the leather sofa. “Irish? Or Welsh?”
“Oh, Irish all the way. She said, ‘I may have a Welsh last name, but my family has been in Ireland for donkey’s years.’ She is quite the worker. Changed our bed sheets and cleaned the kitchen. She will be departing when she finishes the floor.”
Mitchell poured himself a cup of tea, grabbed a raisin biscuit, then sat on the sofa. “Can I get your professional opinion on something? What do you call a man who isn’t having an affair, yet refuses to have intimate relations with his new wife?”
“A homosexual, perhaps?”
“I have heard that term when performing my police duties. It’s relatively new,” Mitchell replied. “But it doesn’t apply to the man in question—so he says.”
“There are other terms for the classification of sexual preferences. Ready for a history lesson?”
Mitchell sipped his tea. “Go ahead.”
“In ’69, a Hungarian doctor, Karl Maria Kertbeny, wrote a pamphlet deriding a German sodomy law. In his writing, he classified three types of orientation: heterosexual, homosexual, and monosexual, meaning the person is only interested in self-gratification. Two years ago, I read a paper by a German physiologist where he crafted a new orientation: he referred to people without any sexual desire at all as anesthesia sexual. Some doctors have shortened that to a-sexual.”
Could that be it? Did Addington detest physical contact and harbor no desire toward anyone? “So it’s a rare sickness, then?”
Drew shook his head. “Some medical quacks think anyone’s sexual preferences beyond heterosexual is a mental illness. I do not subscribe to such narrow thinking, however. I also am not sure how rare a-sexualism is. Sex, in general, is not considered polite conversation, even within intimate relationships. So, because no one discusses it, studying it is problematic. Does this have to do with the baron you are following?”
“You will keep this confidence?”
“Of course.”
Mitchell popped the biscuit in his mouth, chewed, then swallowed. “Yes, it’s Addington. He told his wife he specifically married to continue the line. But on their wedding night, he couldn’t—and hasn’t. The baroness thinks he is having an affair, and so, is contemplating divorce.”
“Divorce cases are public. How mortifying for all concerned if a-sexualism is the reason for severing the marriage. It will make all the papers. Honestly, Mitchell, you cannot mention this to Lady Addington. First, this is just speculation on my part, nothing but mere conjecture. Second, this is a private and personal matter between a husband and wife.”
Mitchell raised an eyebrow. “So I am to allow the lady to believe her husband finds her abhorrent?”
Drew nodded. “You were hired to follow Baron Addington and report to the baroness. That is all. Professionally speaking, that should be the sum total of your actions. Unless your feelings run far deeper than you are letting on.”
Mitchell frowned. Drew Hornsby, though maddingly annoying at times, was correct. Mitchell had no business inserting himself into a personal situation that was none of his business. He knew this. And yes, damn it all, his feelings ran deeper than was proper. He remained silent, sipping his tea and speculating whether he’d made a momentous mistake taking this case.
“By the by, I spoke to my father this morning,” Drew said, breaking the silence. “Alas, he has nothing scandalous to offer regarding Addington. The baron diligently attended the House of Lords before the recess and expressed an interest in joining my father’s progressive caucus.”
So, the baron conscientiously performed his duties and even showed eagerness to bring about reforms. Nothing scandalous there, indeed. It proved he was a decent sort, at least as far as society was concerned.
Mrs. Evans strode into the room. She looked no more than one or two inches over five feet. “The doctor and the detective! Everything is just grand! The chicken is in the icebox, along with the tats and carrots. Pick at it as you will. I’ll pop around the shops on the morrow to put in a grocery order; then I’ll make a nice apple tart. Make me a list of your preferences so I’ll know what to cook. That’s it, gents. I’m off.” With a wave, she was gone.
“Did you make out what she said?” Mitchell asked.
“She speaks fast, to be certain. Chicken and vegetables are in the icebox. She will be getting groceries tomorrow, and we are to make a list of our food preferences. Sorry, I couldn’t make out the rest.”
Mitchell chuckled. “I heard apple tart tomorrow.”
“Back to your case. It is not for me to tell you what to do. I do apologize. I was offering advice as a friend.”
Mitchell raised his teacup. “Cheers. As a friend, I will take that advice.”
And he should wrap up this case as soon as possible. Pining for a married woman would bring nothing but misery and heartache.
*
Jedidiah Danaher was alive.
Although, alive was a relative term. He walked about and breathed in and out. But since he’d been caught in the cellar when his burning pub had collapsed on him, he should be an unidentifiable blackened corpse that had been carelessly tossed into a pauper’s grave.
By the luck of Hades, he had escaped his fate. Peter Tassel, a homeless drunk who often swept up in Jedi’s Black Moon pub for the price of a pint of port and permission to sleep occasionally in the cellar, had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that had been convenient—for Jedi.
Maybe his plan to kidnap a viscount’s brother for ransom had been ill-fated, although it worked many times before. But that bloody vigilante showed up, and then, that bloody copper Simpson, a thorn in his side, had arrived and mucked things up good and proper. Jedi was still not completely convinced Simpson was not the vigilante, even though the copper stood alongside the masked bugger. It could have been an elaborate ruse to confuse him, or maybe Jedi was seeing conspiracies where there were none.
Regardless of the reasons, Jedi had managed to escape his fate. He wasn’t the king of Notting Dale for nothing. He’d built a tunnel from the pub cellar into the condemned building next door. As soon as he fell through the burning flooring into that cellar, he rolled around on the dirt to smother the fire engulfing his arm, then jumped to his feet and trundled the sleeping drunk directly into the pile of fiery wood, where Homeless Pete became immediately engulfed in a wall of fire. The man had probably been drenched in alcohol. Tassel had screamed briefly, but it was all over in an instant. Poor bugger, but as Jedi reasoned, “Better him than me.”
Since that had transpired a month and a half ago, Jedi had been scuttling about the dark alleys and dank crevices of the Notting Dale rookery. To the world, he was dead, and Jedidiah Danaher wanted to keep it that way. Escaping the fire was one thing, but the way he’d eluded the police in the aftermath had been the devil’s own luck. Jedi had thought his goose was cooked when he found himself trapped in the tunnel between the two buildings. The hinges on the door leading into the condemned building had been rusted shut, and he hadn’t dared kick at it with coppers and firefighting blokes directly overhead and out in the streets.
Hours after the fire was extinguished, he’d heard the men jump into the Black Moon Pub cellar. Jedi had held his breath, for they’d have found the tunnel door if they’d looked close enough. But because they’d stumbled across Tassel’s charred corpse, the coppers had immediately assumed it was him and hadn’t bothered to inspect the cellar further.
Jedi took a bite of the meat pie he had bought from a street vendor outside his rented room. Being a rookery boss, the king of a slum full of tenements, he had planned for any scenario. He’d had a small stash of cash in a tin box hidden behind a loose brick in one of the buildings on Bangor Street, and with those funds, he’d been able to rent a room near Notting Dale on Talbot Road, buy three different hooded cloaks, and kept himself fed while he planned his next move. He glanced about the room. It was comfortable enough, and if he lived frugally, the money could last a good while…but not indefinitely. That was the reason he’d sought out his baron father. He had to plan for the future. With money, he could leave England, change his name, and start a new life. Or perhaps he should try to take another foothold in Notting Dale or move on to greener pastures as he had done in the past. He’d had to start over a few times in his forty-plus years of living. During those rare low ebbs, he’d had to swallow his pride and seek out his baron father for an infusion of money. Baron Addington had always given in—if only to be rid of him. Jedidiah knew the baron would rather forget Jedidiah existed. What upright low-level peer wanted an illegitimate son lingering about?
When Jedi knocked on the baron’s door earlier, the last thing he expected to hear was the miserable cur was dead. He felt nothing upon hearing the news. Shocked, perhaps, and irritated since the man cocked up his toes before Jedi got everything he was owed from the baron. But those fleeting emotions dissipated swiftly enough.
Because as far as Jedi was concerned, he was still owed.
A new baron, eh?
And with a fancy piece for a wife. When the woman had approached the door, he’d thought his decrepit so-called father had married again. But no—a distant cousin was now the baron. Jedi must have missed the death announcement in the papers. But this meant that the distant cousin was also a cousin to Jedi. A blood relation was now in charge of the purse strings—a relation who kept separate lodgings.
Interesting, that .
Jedi followed the new baron from Wimpole Street to Camden Town. Because Jedi had the distinct feeling he was being followed, he had the hansom cab driver pull off to a side street, but he knew the general vicinity of where Addington lived. He would discover the address soon enough.
Meanwhile, he would lay low, plan and scheme, and when the time was right, he would let the new baron know that the previous baron’s by-blow was still alive.
As for retribution for past events?
Finding out the copper Simpson was not the annoying masked vigilante who prowled Notting Dale’s streets had been a shock. Last he heard, the detective was off on sick leave, maybe never to return. From what he heard on the streets, the vigilante hadn’t been about lately either. So, as far as Jedi was concerned, that was old news that belonged firmly in the past. He did not have the time or inclination to settle old scores. Why bother? It was a lesson Jedi had learned early on. Life was too precarious and short to expend valuable time, resources, and emotions in satisfying a perceived hurt or insult. He had new and exciting fish to fry. Besides, money was more important than revenge, at least in Jedi’s book—another hard-earned truth.
And Jedi would make certain he received his share.