Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
The door to the row house opened and Hugh fell backward, his resting place suddenly ripped away from him. Sprawled across the rear entrance’s threshold, he stared up into the scowling face of his closest friend.
“What in God’s name are you still doing in London, you bloody fool?” Thornton hissed as the toe of his boot kicked Hugh’s shoulder.
He got to his feet, brushed off the seat of his trousers, and turned to face Grant Thornton. It seemed the good doctor had finally deemed it time to come to his Whitechapel clinic.
“Where the hell have you been?” Hugh asked, his throat dry, his stomach grumbling.
He’d spent the night in the back room of a used bookshop on the Strand, compliments of one of Sir’s associates who owed him a favor.
The associate had a key to his uncle’s shop, and assured Sir that no one would be in before eight o’clock in the morning.
So, when the shop bell woke Hugh at half six, he’d nearly brought down a whole stack of musty tomes as he rushed to leave through the alley door.
He’d told Sir to meet him at the Whitechapel clinic at nine sharp with whatever information Audrey had managed to find at Mr. Potridge’s office.
Sir would have gone to Violet House the afternoon before, but he’d unfortunately stopped by Bedford Street to inform Hugh’s valet, Basil—who was holding down the residence in Hugh’s absence and likely dusting and washing everything to within an inch to its life—that Hugh was still alive.
A foot constable placed on watch outside number 19 Bedford Street had seen Sir, and he’d had to run like the devil to lose him.
On the off chance he was spotted again, Hugh told him to keep a far step from Audrey until well past nightfall.
“Get inside,” Thornton said, pulling him into the kitchen.
The spare collection of rooms was run down and sparsely furnished, but the entry level floor of the row house saw plenty of commotion once a week when Thornton opened the doors to the public.
He treated all manner of ailing, consumptive, and disease-ridden men, women, and children here, and because he was irrefutably in line for sainthood, he kept coming back for more.
A fire in the cookstove was in the process of heating four large pans of water, and Thornton’s nurse, a young woman named Miss Matthews, was busy preparing his instruments.
She ignored Hugh after a quick nod hello; he had nothing to fear from her.
She’d been with Thornton for a few years, and if she weren’t trustworthy, she wouldn’t be here at his secret clinic.
Here, Thornton was known only as Doctor Brown.
No one in the ton knew of the place, certainly not his father, the Marquess of Lindstrom.
That his son was a physician was embarrassing enough; that he would cater to the lower denizens would have caused the gentleman to perish on the spot.
At the moment, that made the clinic the perfect place for Hugh to be.
Thornton grabbed the kettle and a tin of black tea.
He offered it, and bread and jam or butter, or some bit of food, to all his patients when they came to see him.
Many of them were ill from diseases stemming from malnourishment.
The food only sated them for a short while, but at least it was something they could depend upon.
“You’re in a world of shit, my friend,” Thornton said.
“I am aware.”
“You need to get out of the bloody country. They will hang you.” He banged around the kitchen getting Hugh tea, his nurturing soul on full display now. It was rather touching to see his friend in such a state, but it also highlighted the seriousness of Hugh’s situation.
Thornton was no coddling sod. He was the sort of friend who told Hugh to toughen up or get the fuck out.
Last fall, when Hugh showed up at Thornton’s door, his arm in dire need of aid after being impaled with a long blade, his friend had joked about possible sepsis, the risk of permanent injury to the muscles and tendons, and how he might never be able to use his hand again for personal pleasure, all while stitching him up.
Now, however, Thornton wasn’t joking. He wasn’t treating this lightly or with his usual blasé attitude.
“I know a man who can get you to Dover. You can take a packet to Calais,” Thornton said as Hugh sawed off a thick slice of bread from a loaf on the table. He took a bite, and with a full mouth, asked, “You think I’m going to run? Give up my life here for something I didn’t do?”
“You won’t have a life if they find you.” Thornton slammed the porcelain teapot onto the table. The dainty pattern of roses didn’t fit with this shabby kitchen.
“I am not leaving the country,” Hugh said evenly. He swallowed the bread, which instantly quelled the growling of his stomach. “Eloisa was murdered, and I think Barty had something to do with it.”
Thornton turned to his nurse, and with his unspoken request, she nodded and left the kitchen. He pulled out the chair across from Hugh at the small table.
“Explain,” Thornton said as he sat.
“A few days before she was killed, Eloisa came to me.” Hugh then divulged his sister’s suggestion that April Barlow was his mother, and about his visits to Sir Roberts’s home and the Field Street finishing school.
“I think Barty sent a man to warn off Miss Barlow,” he said. “If Eloisa knew of her, surely, he did as well.”
“And Miss Barlow is now missing?”
Hugh raised his hands in a gesture of ambiguity. “Perhaps. Or perhaps she is simply hiding somewhere for a little while.”
“At Chatham Park?” Thornton suggested, but Hugh had already dismissed that idea. She and her father were not close.
“She has a sister. Sir Robert did not say her name or anything about her.” And Miss Carey, the assistant headmistress, had not known.
Hugh imagined April Barlow had revealed very little about her life to the young woman.
The lie that Hugh had died as a child continued to spear him.
The excuse afforded her a reason to keep the oil portrait on display; but why keep it at all?
“You believe Neatham knew of Eloisa’s intent to ruin him,” Thornton said, sitting forward, elbows on the table. “And this unknown man who met with Miss Barlow…you think he’s the one who killed your sister.”
It made the most sense so far. Still, as priggish and mean as Barty had always been, Hugh couldn’t quite believe that he would order the death of a sibling.
Wishing she had died alongside her infant, as he’d so callously said back at Neatham House, was altogether different than actively ordering her death.
Not to mention that Eloisa had been hiding her presence in London from him.
He had seemed genuine in his surprise to learn she was in town.
Thornton sat back in his chair. “April Barlow or Catherine Marsden—what does it matter to Barty who your mother is? How could the discovery of Miss Barlow possibly threaten him?”
Hugh gulped his tea, and as it warmed his belly, he told Thornton of his clandestine conversation with Lady Reed the previous day at St. George’s and what the marchioness had imparted about the late viscountess’s fear that Bartholomew wasn’t the true Neatham heir.
“But there is no basis for it. A little thing called primogeniture ensures no bastard child can ever claim a title,” Hugh went on with a wave of his hand. “Besides, I was born months after Barty when my father was already married to Joanna.”
Thornton sat still, his coloring suddenly going pale. His lips parted as he continued to stare blankly at Hugh. “You saw Lady Reed? Yesterday?”
“Were you not listening?”
“When was your meeting?”
Hugh tore off another piece of bread, forgoing the knife this time. “Two o’clock. What does it matter?”
Thornton shoved back his chair, the scrape against the bare board floors grating. “Fuck.” He raked his fingers through his hair, his distress clear.
Hugh tossed the bread back onto the table. “What is it?”
Before his friend could begin to explain, Hugh knew. The premonition had haunted the back of his mind since leaving the church.
“Lady Reed was found dead last evening,” Thornton said, and Hugh’s stomach dropped. “Lord Reed said her maid discovered her. She’d been resting in her bedchamber but wouldn’t wake. They are saying it was apoplexy or heart failure.”
Hugh stared into his drained teacup as frustration simmered. He’d told her to be cautious, to not go anywhere alone. She hadn’t thought her own home would be unsafe.
“Or it was a pillow over her face while she slept,” Hugh said, closing his hand into a fist.
“Death by suffocation causes burst blood vessels in the eyes, and the state of the victim’s tongue can also indicate asphyxiation.
” Thornton’s matter-of-fact way of speaking about anything medical at least felt normal.
“If any coroner is intelligent enough to note those findings, her death will be investigated. And bloody hell, Hugh—you were with her. You, a man who is already wanted for another murder that occurred in her home just a few nights before.”
“You don’t need to remind me.”
“Who saw you together?”
He closed his eyes, feeling a sharp pang in his temple at this new blow.
“A pastor, but I doubt he recognized me.” Someone clearly had seen them together though. “The killer must have been watching. He was either following me or Lady Reed.”
“You would know if you were being followed,” Thornton assured him. And he was right. Hugh had been abundantly careful. He also had Sir, whose sharp-eyed observation rivaled the finest officers at Bow Street. Still, he worried.
“I need a favor,” Hugh said, with an ill curl of unease.
“If it’s within the law.” Thornton shrugged. “Or a reasonable inch beyond it.”
“Find someone you trust to keep watch over the duchess and Violet House. Night and day.”
His friend peered at him, and the scowl he’d met Hugh with on the doorstep made a return. “Why would I need to do that?”