Chapter 51
The Forge, Seven Dials, later that evening
Fitzwilliam let the words settle. The room went on pretending not to listen. Cups lifted, dice clicked once, and no man looked too long in their direction.
He drew on his glove. “You are very composed for a man with a gentleman’s daughter between his trade and a magistrate.”
Roark’s good eye narrowed.
“Tell me something useful,” Fitzwilliam said, “or I stop asking and let Villiers begin.”
Villiers leant forward, setting his feet. Harris’s hammer came down into his hand. Simms did not move at all.
Roark looked from one man to the next, then back to Fitzwilliam. “They say you tore out a Frenchman’s throat at Badajoz.”
“He did not understand his adversary.”
“With your teeth.”
“As I said.” Fitzwilliam held Roark’s good eye.
Roark nodded. “Upper Gower Street.”
“What number?”
Roark volunteered the door number. “Ask for Mrs Price.”
Fitzwilliam rose. “What is she to you?”
Roark looked up. “Mrs Price is my man Sykes’s cousin.”
Villiers opened the door. Harris and Simms took the room on either side of Fitzwilliam, who tucked his hat beneath his arm.
“Then I shall be civil.”
* * *
Upper Gower Street, later that evening
The houses stood in a sober line, their brick darkened by weather and coal-smoke, their steps scrubbed clean enough to prove effort rather than prosperity.
At the number Roark had given, one lamp burned behind a muslin blind.
No carriage waited before the door. The brass knocker had been polished, but not lately.
Villiers looked up at the windows. “Respectable.”
“Nearly,” Fitzwilliam said.
Harris had already passed the house once and returned by the opposite pavement. “No man at the back that I saw. There’s a kitchen light, and a woman moving within.”
“Mrs Price?”
“Could be.”
“Then we shall ask.” Fitzwilliam drew his watch. “Villiers, show them your manners.”
Villiers mounted the steps and swung his fist against the panel three times.
The sound carried sharply in the quiet street. A moment passed. Then another. A chain shifted within, and the door opened as far as the fastening allowed.
A woman’s face appeared in the gap, pale beneath a cap hastily tied. Her eyes went first to Villiers’s shoulders, then to Harris behind him.
“We take no callers at this hour.”
“Mrs Price?” Villiers asked.
Her hand tightened upon the door. “Who asks?”
“Colonel Fitzwilliam.”
The name did nothing.
Villiers did not raise his voice. “Roark gave up the house.”
The woman’s colour changed. Her gaze darted once past them towards the street, as if Seven Dials might somehow have followed them to Gower Street and stood waiting beneath the lamp.
She swallowed. “Mr Price is not at home.”
“Then you may be easier. We have not come for him.”
She did not open the door.
Fitzwilliam mounted the steps. “Mrs Price, a gentleman’s daughter has been taken. Mr Kerr has some connexion to the matter.”
The chain trembled.
Behind her, somewhere within the house, a board creaked.
Villiers’s head turned a fraction.
Mrs Price heard it too. “That is only my girl.”
“Open the door,” Fitzwilliam said. “Now.”
For one more heartbeat she held the chain. Then it slid back.
Mrs Price stood aside.
“Villiers, charm the household. Harris, Simms, see what this lady has not told us.” Fitzwilliam turned to Mrs Price. “Direct me to Mr Kerr’s correspondence.”
“Second floor,” she said. “Back room.”
Villiers took her arm before she could retreat. “Come along, ma’am. The colonel dislikes a wandering hostess.”
Fitzwilliam went up without her.
The stair was narrow and clean, the runner worn to the threads at the turn. No pictures hung upon the wall. No vase stood upon the landing. The house had the careful emptiness of people who owned little and dusted what remained.
Behind him, Harris moved like a shadow with weight to it. Simms took the next flight without a sound.
The second-floor passage held three doors. One stood ajar upon a room smelling of camphor and stale linen. Another was shut but unlatched. The back room was locked.
Harris came to his side and tried the handle once. “Locked, sir.”
Fitzwilliam stepped back. “Be persuasive.”
Harris took one step forward and swung the hammer. The first blow tore the lock from its seating; the second drove the door inward against the wall.
The room beyond was cold.
It was not the room of a desperate man. No clothes had been flung over a chair, no bottle left uncorked, no ash scattered, no plate abandoned.
The bed had been made with severe care. A single coat hung upon a peg.
The washstand held a basin, ewer, razor, and folded cloth, each in its place.
On the mantel, a clock ticked with a small, precise sound.
At the window stood a desk.
A narrow, well-used thing of dark wood, the surface rubbed pale where hands had rested for years. Upon it lay an inkstand, three sharpened pens, a paper-knife, a ruler, and a stack of folded sheets squared to the edge.
Fitzwilliam crossed to it. He did not touch the papers at once.
The top sheet bore a controlled hand: Thomas Robert Bennet. Longbourn. Hertfordshire.
Below it, in narrower lines:
Second son. Trinity College. Expelled January 1782. Commission purchased thereafter. 10th Foot. Barbados. Returned wounded. Knighted. Estate inherited by failure of elder line. Five daughters. No son.
The next sheet was headed Darcy.
Not Fitzwilliam Darcy first, but Edmund. Pemberley. Younger son. Cambridge. Dead. Then George Darcy, master of Pemberley. Then Fitzwilliam Darcy, son and heir, with notes on income, estate, sister, Ramsgate, Wickham.
Fitzwilliam lifted that page aside.
Beneath it lay his own name.
Fitzwilliam, Richard. Younger son of Matlock. Army. Portugal. Badajoz.
There followed only facts. Regiment, dates, wounds, dispatches, honours.
Fitzwilliam set the page down.
He pulled the drawer. Locked.
Fitzwilliam slid a paper knife along the seam. The drawer resisted, then sprang with a sharp crack. Inside were bundles bound with narrow red ribbon, some new, some faded.
Ashby. Stamford. Cambridge. Glenbride. Bennet. Darcy. Fitzwilliam. Wickham.
Fitzwilliam touched the bundle marked Stamford.
The top paper was a copy, old and handled often. Depositions. A coach overturned near Greatford. A dead lord. A murdered girl. Three Cambridge men named in the margins.
Thomas Bennet. Edmund Darcy. David Fitzwilliam.
Not Richard. David.
His uncle.
Fitzwilliam read until the sense took shape, then stopped. There was no time to read sorrow.
He untied the Ashby bundle next.
An abstract of the Glenbride succession lay inside, dated September 1787. Lord Julian Ashby, deceased. Hugh Ashby. Hugh’s infant son.
Beside it, in Kerr’s controlled hand, a later note had been added.
Hugh Ashby, seventh Earl of Ashby. His son and heir, Lord Glenbride, now four-and-twenty.
Below that, two names stood apart from the lawful line.
Lady Marjorie Kerr.
Alexander Kerr.
Fitzwilliam laid the sheet flat beside Bennet’s and looked once around the pristine room.
“Not a ransom,” he said. “A trial.”
He gathered the papers and went down.
Villiers waited at the foot of the stair, Mrs Price pale beside him.
Fitzwilliam handed him the bound bundles. “This accounts for Kerr.”
“And Wickham, sir?” Villiers asked.
“Greed,” Fitzwilliam said. “And the pleasure of making Darcy pay.”
“Bring the papers.” He put on his hat. “It is time I met Mr Bennet of Longbourn.”