“Where are the two boys buried, Johannes?”
Johannes tasted the blood in his mouth. “In the tenter grounds where they stretch cloth off Holborn, unless the rats have eaten them already.”
Crowther struck him again. Then began to pull on his gloves. A voice or two in the crowd murmured; they began to creep forward. A woman in rags spat at the seated figure. Her yellow bile crawled down his face. A man balled his fists. Johannes looked around.
“You leave me here?”
Crowther felt the comfortable stretch of leather over his knuckles. “Yes, I do.” He turned to the fat woman. “You know where to take the body. Make sure it is before dawn.” She nodded and Crowther looked toward the prisoner again.
“Why, Johannes? You have renown, money of your own. Why do you serve as Manzerotti’s knife man?”
A look of bliss crossed Johannes’s bloody and bruised face. He looked up at the ceiling as if transfixed by some vision of ecstasy, some untouchable joy.
“I had to serve him. He is my voice.”
Crowther did not look around again, though he sensed Jocasta and Sam following him down the stairs. As they paused on the road, from the top of the house they heard the sound of blows, and a muffled sobbing scream.
They hastened in silence to the outer limits of the rookery, where the carriage of the Earl of Sussex stood waiting for them. Jocasta sniffed, recognizing The Chariot again, and nodded to herself, seeing the right and the pattern of it.
“We’ll walk from here, Mr. Crowther. My sorrows and blessings to Mrs. Westerman.”
The footman leaped down from his perch and opened the door. Crowther began to climb into the carriage, then stopped and turned toward her.
“I shall come and ask you of your childhood memories, Mrs. Bligh, when this is done and the grieving passed. I thank you for offering them to me.”
“They’ll do you as much hurt as good. But such is the way of the world.” She let her hand rest on Sam’s shoulder and Crowther took his seat. The footman closed the door on him and fitted the latch. “You know where to find me, Mr. Crowther. Me and Sam.”
He tipped his hat to her and struck his cane on the roof. The coachman stirred his horses into movement and the carriage rattled off into the deserted streets.
“What’s that, Mrs. Bligh?” Sam asked.
“Old wounds that still bleed, lad. But that is for another time. Let us to our own sleepings now.”
Lord Sandwich and Mr. Palmer put the matter very clearly to their reluctant host. Once Carmichael had understood, he was frank with them and explained every part of the business quite thoroughly. He had indeed communicated with the French from time to time and been rewarded for it. At first it was simply for the pleasure of seeing great and influential men listen to him with care and praise, then the habits of subterfuge had become part of him, and he thirsted for the risk of it. He had met Manzerotti in the distant past, but knew of him only as a talented singer until Fitzraven had arrived and presented himself with the letter from Paris and instructions to take Manzerotti into his home and confidence. Fitzraven had been all but drooling when he told Carmichael that Manzerotti had suggested the construction of some hiding places in his home. He had resented the intrusion, but realizing he had little choice, acquiesced.
From the moment Manzerotti arrived, Carmichael was forced to admit he was a master spy and recognize that he himself had only been a dilettante till now. Manzerotti had seen something in the hard features of the woman who ran the coffee room in His Majesty’s and found out her son was an Admiralty clerk. He had then made Johannes his go-between, and soon Carmichael’s hiding places were overflowing with material for France. His public snubbing of Fitzraven went hand in hand with private confidence. He had encouraged the man to try and whore his own daughter for information, and sympathized with his annoyance over their estrangement and her partiality for Bywater. When he found Fitzraven dead he had emptied the room of anything he thought incriminating and summoned Johannes.
Manzerotti’s reasons for ordering the murders of Bywater and then Marin were much as Crowther and Harriet had speculated. He saw the chance to put an end to their investigations before Bywater confessed and the question of how the body ended up in the river grew pressing, then when he heard of Miss Marin’s note he saw the chance to neaten matters still further. Carmichael told them that he only heard of Harriet’s connection to the Marquis de La Fayette at his party, from Sandwich’s own mouth. He was aware of who had been on the ship, but not the name of the captain who had taken the prize, and when he heard Harriet speak shortly afterward of her husband’s returning memory and his talk of spies, he had decided to take action.
Carmichael’s words were written out for him by a trembling clerk, and his signature was made and witnessed while Palmer wondered if it was possible to conceal this last from Harriet. The clerk then left the room and a few moments later so did Sandwich and Mr. Palmer. The latter turned the key in the lock and they made their way down the stairs in silence, pausing only briefly when the report of a pistol shot rang out from behind the closed door.
“I know you would wish a trial, Palmer. You are young enough to look for justice. But it is better so,” Sandwich said.
“My lord,” was all Palmer had by way of answer.
Crowther spoke briefly to Graves in the hallway when he returned to Trevelyan’s house, and to Rachel and Clode in the parlor where they rocked baby Anne in the firelight, before letting himself quietly into the room where Harriet sat vigil by the body of her husband. She looked up as he entered. She held her sleeping son on her lap. Her face was calm, tearstained, still. He came into the center of the room and placed his cane on the ground before him, resting his weight on it with sudden realization of his own exhaustion.
“It is done, Harriet.”
“He is dead?”
“Yes. They beat him to death, and the surgeons will have use of his body. Manzerotti, I am grieved to tell you, escaped.”
She stroked the head of her sleeping child and kissed his white brow. “I know. Graves has told me.” Crowther watched her for a second longer, then with a sigh turned back toward the door. His fingers were on the handle, still wrapped in black leather, when he heard her speak again.
“Thank you, Gabriel.”
He turned and bowed deeply to her, then left the room.
EPILOGUE
14 DECEMBER 1781
Jocasta had seen hangings enough in her twenty years in London, so felt no need to go and watch Mrs. Mitchell swing for her daughter-in-law’s death. It was on that day though that she went to St. Anne’s burying ground with the brooch Molloy had found, leading Sam by the hand. He was looking better for some weeks’ feeding, and a lot cleaner than when they had first met. At the grave, he stood back a way with Boyo in his arms. The ground was hard and Jocasta had a job to scrape into the dirt more than a few inches. Still, the brooch was small and there was space enough for it before many minutes had passed. She laid it down very carefully, brushed the dirt back over it, then stood up, her knees complaining.
Sam stepped up next to her. “I thought you’d be saying something to her, Mrs. Bligh.”
Jocasta ruffled his hair.
Mr. Palmer came to meet Mrs. Westerman in Adams’s Music Shop as arranged. She smiled when she saw him and beckoned him into the private parlor away from the business of music, into the quiet, and took a seat at the worn table there. Mourning became her, and the fierce grief of the first days after her husband’s murder seemed to have mellowed into a relative calm.
“You return to Sussex tomorrow, Mrs. Westerman?” Mr. Palmer said when the door to the main body of the shop was closed.
“I do. Now the trials are done with, there is nothing to hold me here and I find I miss the country air.”