Chapter 35 #2
James sat on the grass in front of Ffoulkes Manor, hunched forward with his legs in front of him, knees up, forearms resting on his knees, forehead resting on his thumbs. His horse grazed nearby.
Mr. Bulverton came over and stood next to him. One of the riders brought over a small stool, and Mr. Bulverton sat.
James said nothing.
“It’s been an odd business all along the way,” Mr. Bulverton said. “I set you onto Sir Francis Ffoulkes because of his association with the Marquis DuBois de Laval. And because I knew he had overextended himself and was in debt and, hence, vulnerable.”
James squinted and looked up at Bulverton on his stool. “Not because of Mrs. Lovelock?”
“Mrs. Lovelock? No, she is entirely incidental.”
She’s not incidental to me.
“You’ll remember I asked you to watch Ffoulkes before you ever met Mrs. Lovelock.”
James thought. “That’s true.”
“Indeed, if Ffoulkes had married Mrs. Lovelock, I might have halted surveillance of him because he would have had the money he needed. He would have been unlikely to do DuBois’ bidding.”
“But why would DuBois steal Cather—Mrs. Lovelock’s letters? Why would he want to know what I wrote to her?”
“He didn’t. He wanted to know what Ffoulkes wrote to her. The maid in question simply pilfered all the letters she could get her hands on before her mistress opened them.”
“I don’t understand why DuBois would go to all this trouble for some plans for a ship.”
A rider brought a hamper basket over to Mr. Bulverton and set it down. Mr. Bulverton opened it and took out two glasses.
“Here.” He handed the glasses to James and took out a jug and uncorked it. He poured two foaming glasses of ale and took one back from James and drank deeply. He wiped the foam from his lip. “Go on and drink, Your Grace.”
James drank.
“The strangest thing about all this? The man who drew up the plans was a painter when he was younger and actually shared a studio with Roger Siddons around the time he was painting Mrs. Lovelock’s, uh, portrait.
” Mr. Bulverton drank more. “It seems, however unlikely, a scrap of chance. Serendipity. The man’s name was Robert Fulton. Have you heard of him?”
James shrugged. “No.”
Mr. Bulverton poured them both more ale.
“An interesting man. American. Miniature painter who got interested in steam ships and canals. Was painting here but then went to Paris and built an underwater ship for Napoleon in eighteen hundred. But Napoleon didn’t pay him, so Fulton took the ship apart for scrap.
That was the Nautilus. Then he came back to England in oh-four, and the navy hired him to design another underwater ship.
But when Nelson won Trafalgar, it was clear the British Navy was so dominant, an underwater ship was deemed unnecessary, and it was all given up.
Fulton went home to America. He died there three years ago.
The plans Fulton had drawn up for the British underwater ship were put into the archive at the Navy Board. ”
“Why would DuBois want the plans for an underwater ship?”
“It is called a sub-marine. Quite clever, that.” Mr. Bulverton drank. “Why do you think, Your Grace?
“The war is over.”
“Yes.”
“So . . . ?”
“A ship that can be under water and invisible for a day or more at a time. A ship like that might be the ideal way to approach a heavily guarded island that has four ships patrolling it at all times.”
“St. Helena’s?”
Mr. Bulverton said nothing but took another swig of ale.
“DuBois is a Bonapartist?”
Mr. Bulverton raised his eyebrows.
“DuBois means to rescue Napoleon from St. Helena’s?”
“Yes, Your Grace. That is my theory. I first got an inkling of what DuBois might be conniving at based on what you overheard at the modiste’s. Le veuf, you heard, correct?”
“Yes.”
“At first, I thought le veuf, or the widower, referred to Sir Francis Ffoulkes. After all, he had been recently widowed. But some more recent work on coded messages passed among Bonapartists taught us le veuf is a code name for Bonaparte.”
“But his wife still lives. Bonaparte’s, that is.”
“Yes, but his first wife, Josephine, the older woman he divorced because she could not provide heirs, the one he truly loved, she died while he was in exile on Elba. He would not come out of his room for two days after he heard the news. That is when the Bonapartists started calling him le veuf.”
An older woman he loved but whom he had abandoned because she couldn’t give him sons. No wonder Catherine had thought their love affair doomed from the start.
James cleared his throat. “You know I burnt the painting, and I saw no plans.”
“I’m not surprised. Wedging the sub-marine plans into the frame at the back of the painting was an impromptu decision, and like most schemes born of impulse, it failed.
The plans could have fallen out anywhere.
On the floor of the Great Hall, on the Strand as you carried the painting to your coach, in your coach itself, or—"
“—in my dressing room.”
“Yes, after learning this morning you had bought a painting from the Royal Academy, an institution that shares a building with the Navy Board, and the painting had been Siddons’ target, I sent someone to search your rooms before I set out for Kent.
But I felt I should not wait to question Sir Francis.
As you see, I had already waited too long.
” Mr. Bulverton shrugged and poured more ale.
“I feel badly about Sir Francis.”
“Yes, money is a devil of a thing, isn’t it?” Mr. Bulverton drank.
James lay back on the grass and watched some small white clouds scudding across the sky.
“I just wonder where Catherine has gone to.”
“Ah, Mrs. Lovelock. You don’t know?”
James sat up. “You know?”
“I know a great deal. Of course, I know that.”
James got on his knees and grabbed the lapels of Mr. Bulverton’s much-patched coat.
“Where is she?”
“She’s gone to Dover, Your Grace. She means to cross the channel to France.”