Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
Unlike the pampered individuals of London’s upper crust, the working class did not sleep in most days until noon.
They were setting off to their jobs or businesses when the sun touched the spires of the city and chased away night shadows.
Costermongers set up their carts, shops lifted their awnings and opened their doors, newsboys hawked morning editions on corners, and in the case of Lucy Givens and countless other women living in the East End like her, so began a new day of monotony and struggle as she tried to care for her children.
Sir’s mother was likely no more than thirty years of age and yet the few times Hugh had met her, she’d appeared at least a decade older. Her thin frame gave her a hollowed-out appearance, and there were usually yellowing bruises or fresh purple ones peeking out from under her shawl or cuffs.
Hugh stood on a short close, off Fenschurch Street, preparing to meet with Lucy Givens. Tyne and Stevens would have either paid her a visit last night or sent a constable to escort her to Bow Street. If they had not alerted her to her husband’s death, then Hugh was hopeful Sir had.
He hadn’t been at Bedford Street when Hugh and Thornton arrived there the evening before, and Basil had not seen him either.
The valet had looked stricken upon hearing the news of Givens’s murder and Sir’s misfortune of seeing the body, and though at midnight, he’d said he was going to bed, Hugh had heard Basil shuffling about well into the early morning hours.
Hugh remained in his study, lamps lit, an ear peeled for any sound near the kitchen, where Sir always let himself in.
Of course, Hugh had imposed some rules for Sir to adhere to while living under his roof, and when he’d stopped being his ‘assistant’ and increased his tutoring sessions with Mr. Fines, the rules had become even stricter.
Sir was not to stay out past nine o’clock at night; if Hugh was not present, he was to leave word with Basil or Whitlock or Mrs. Peets about from where he could be fetched; he was not to associate with anyone connected to the Whitechapel gangs he’d once been connected to; and he was not to spend a single farthing of his weekly allowance on gambling or illicit substances.
All night, Hugh had clung to the theory that Sir must have gone to his mother.
And when dawn crested over the city, he had dressed and hailed a hack to Fenschurch Street.
It was moderately better than where Sir had grown up in Whitechapel.
Though Hugh had offered to pay the monthly fee, Sir insisted it would be his own allowance that would keep the place.
The smart lad paid the landlord directly, rather than giving the money to his mother, who would, undoubtedly, have lost it to her husband if he ever got whiff of it.
Men like the unfortunate Harlan Givens could scent a coin as powerfully as a bloodhound could scent its quarry.
Hugh ascended the common stairwell to the third floor and brought his fist down upon the door.
The wailing of a child and the chattering of other children came through the walls clearly, even before Mrs. Givens opened it to see who’d come calling.
Her expression wasn’t any more drawn or dejected than usual, and for a moment Hugh worried she did not yet know the news.
That he would be the one required to give it.
But then a weak smile touched her starched lips.
“You’ve heard about Harlan, then, my lord?”
Heard. He removed his hat, thinking over her comment quickly. She didn’t seem to know that he had been there at Vauxhall when her husband was found. Which meant Sir had most likely not been here yet.
“I have,” he said. “I’ve come to give my condolences and see if there is anything I can be of assistance with.”
She stepped aside, a gesture for him to enter.
He did, entering a small space packed with wash hanging from drying racks, baskets of waiting wash, minimal and cheap furniture, and gray, bare walls.
The air in the entry room, which doubled as kitchen, dining space, and recreational area for the children, was hazy from coal smoke in the small brazier.
But there were small signs of modest luxury: the wash consisted of new linens and clothing.
One of Sir’s younger sisters sat in a chair, peeling a small orange, of which there were several more in a bowl on the table.
The other sister, slightly younger, held a porcelain doll that was certainly not secondhand.
Lucy Givens herself brought the fine shawl she wore tighter around her, her fingers drifting over the still vibrant velvet.
Hugh’s other rule for Sir had been that he must save at least some of his allowance for himself, and not spend all of it on his mother and sisters. But, of course, Hugh could not regulate that, and he also could not fault the boy for wanting to take care of his family. It seemed he had.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Hugh said, turning away from the young girls and lowering his voice.
“You know what kind of man my Harlan were,” she replied, her voice tight and unemotional. “It were only a matter of time ‘fore he riled someone stronger than him.”
She turned away to sooth her youngest daughter, squirming in a highchair, her nose red and runny, tears sparkling on her long eyelashes.
“Do you know of anyone specific he’d angered lately?” Hugh asked.
She shook her head, lifting the little one from the chair and hinging her on the hip.
“He was working a steady job at a gaming hell,” Hugh went on. “Did he ever speak of anyone he met with there who might have had a vendetta against him?”
Mrs. Givens bobbed the sniffling baby on her hip as she went to the slim window in the kitchen. She stared through it with a kind of wistful expression that Hugh couldn’t make out. Not sadness exactly.
“He weren’t just at the Seven Sins,” she answered listlessly, eyes still on the window. “He had a few other jobs.”
Hugh frowned. To have even one job was a feat for Mr. Givens. “Do you know where?”
“He wouldn’t tell me a thing about it,” she said. “Said he couldn’t, that I might go and run my gob and then he’d be in for it. But he were acting strange the last few weeks. Never seen him so twitchy.”
Audrey’s vision came to mind, and how the two unidentified men who’d approached Givens had accused him of running his own gob. He’d known something. Something he shouldn’t have.
“Do you have any idea what kind of work he was doing elsewhere? Security again?”
She closed her eyes as the child on her hip continued to squirm. An interrogation wasn’t something the woman needed this morning. And Hugh wasn’t on the murder case anyhow.
“Officers from Bow Street will be investigating,” he said, curbing his questions. “I’m here to see if Sir—Davy—had been by.”
She brightened a little, hearing her son’s name. But the corner of her mouth tugged down. “No. Should he’ve been?”
Hugh hesitated, but then decided as Sir’s mother, she was due the truth.
Briefly, he explained how he’d been at Vauxhall at the time her husband’s body had been discovered, and the unfortunate occurrence of her son coming upon the scene.
Mrs. Givens took a seat at the table, her youngest whining and wriggling in her lap.
“And you haven’t seen him since?”
Hugh shook his head. “I’d hoped to find him here.”
The only other place he could think of where Sir would seek any comfort would be in Whitechapel, with his past acquaintances.
The gangs of the East End were rife with boys his age and having quit the slums for a time to work for a toff, Sir might face opposition there.
But at thirteen, Sir had grown headstrong and acerbic.
Lately, even Hugh had been the target of his contempt.
Mrs. Givens set the wriggling child onto the floor, which only made her wails increase, and then got to her feet. “My boy knows how to mind himself out there.”
He nodded, knowing she was right, and hoping that Sir’s time with the beau monde hadn’t polished away the grit required to survive on the streets.
Hugh took his leave and hailed another hack on Fenschurch.
He had two more destinations in mind for that morning, the first of which was The Chesterfield at Portman Square.
The former grand home had been renovated into subscription apartments for fashionable young men of means.
But when the porter greeted Hugh at the front entrance, he was informed that a Mr. Travis Comstock did not lease any of the twelve apartments within.
Furthermore, the porter, who had been in his position for seven years, had never heard of the man.
Hugh thanked him and left, certain that Comstock had deceived Mr. and Mrs. Silas about multiple things regarding himself, and that he’d deceived Bethany too.
If the young woman had eloped, she most likely did not know her new husband as well as she thought.
Another, shorter ride in a hired hack delivered him to number four Bow Street.
Pangs of nostalgia and melancholy chimed through him as he took in the building’s familiar facade.
This place had been a second home to him.
In fact, it had been his primary home, and Bedford Street a place to rest his head.
Now, however, he had the baffling sensation of wearing ill-fitting clothes as he entered through the front door, nodding hello to the front desk clerk, Davis, who replied with an uncertain bob of his chin.
He didn’t stop Hugh when he started in the direction of Sir Gabriel’s office.
The magistrate’s court would be breaking soon, if they hadn’t already, and the formidable knight, appointed thus for his service to the Crown during the Peninsula Wars, would be back in his office.