Belgravia (21 page)

As he walked into the public house, the smell of spilled beer and damp sawdust was overwhelming. John was well used to some of the seamier parts of town, but even he found the Horse and Groom a little too much for his taste.

He ordered himself a pint of beer and stood in the corner with his back to the wall, waiting. Speer had told him that Mr. Turton always looked in for a quick one at around five, and sure enough, on the dot of five, when the clock over the bar was actually striking, a tall, slim, gray-faced man wearing a black coat and shiny black shoes walked through the door. He looked quite out of place in this establishment, yet as he pulled up a chair the barman walked over with a bottle of gin and poured from it into a small glass without a single word being exchanged. Turton nodded. He may not have been an ebullient sort of fellow, but he was obviously a regular here and a creature of habit.

“Mr. Turton, isn’t it?” asked John.

Turton knocked back the glass of gin then looked up at him. “Might be.” Close up, he looked weary. “Do I know you?”

“No,” said John, sitting down opposite him. “But I understand we might be able to do business.”

“You and me?” Turton was slightly unnerved. He was in the habit of selling on the odd side of beef, rolling out some good cheese, or a few nice bottles of claret that nobody would ever notice. He and the cook, Mrs. Babbage, had an understanding. She would overorder slightly, nothing too drastic—some extra pheasants to be sent up from Glanville, a touch more mutton than they would need, and he would sell on the extras. He was well known in the pub; he’d sit there from five to six of an afternoon and do a
little business of his own. Naturally, he gave Mrs. Babbage a cut. Not perhaps as much as she deserved, but he was the one taking the risk; all she had to do was make a deliberate mistake with the orders and nobody could ever build a charge on that. He’d worked for the Trenchards for almost twenty-five years, joined them not long after their daughter died, so they trusted him. The only person he really had to keep an eye on was Mrs. Frant. She was an irritating busybody, always poking her nose in. He and Mrs. Babbage had a good thing going, and he was determined that the housekeeper wouldn’t get the chance to destroy it. Now he checked John up and down, taking in the expensive clothes and the gold chain of a pocket watch. He did not look like a man in need of a haunch of ham.

“I doubt you and I would have much business in common, sir,” he said.

“Oh,” said John, “but that’s where you are wrong.” He took a sip of his ale. “I am looking for some help in a private matter, and you could be just the right man for the job. There would be a small reward, of course.”

“How small?”

John smiled. “That rather depends on the results.”

Which got Turton’s attention. It was all very well selling a cut of beef here and there, but some proper money, a nest egg, that would be very welcome indeed. So he allowed this young gentleman to buy him another gin while he listened carefully to what he was after.

Forty minutes later, the two of them walked out of the Horse and Groom and headed back toward Eaton Square. Turton asked John to wait for him at the corner of the mews. He would be back in a few minutes. He had the perfect person, he said: someone else who had worked in the household for years, and who was always partial to extra money. “She’s a woman who knows what’s good for her,” he said before he disappeared around the corner. “You mark my words.”

John stood on the street, underneath a gas lamp, with his collar turned up and his hat pulled down. This was all too close to the
Trenchards’ home for comfort. He wished the man would hurry up. The last thing he needed was to bump into Susan, or Trenchard himself for that matter.

Eventually, Turton returned with a stout-looking party by his side. She was wearing a black bonnet and an expensive maroon lace shawl. “Sir,” Turton said, his hand outstretched. “This is Miss Ellis. Mrs. Trenchard’s maid. She’s been working in the household for thirty years. What she doesn’t know about the comings and goings of this family isn’t worth worrying about.” It was irritating to Turton that he couldn’t manage this commission without the help of Miss Ellis, but he knew he couldn’t. He and Mr. Trenchard got along well enough, but they were not confidants by any stretch of the imagination, while Miss Ellis… She and Mrs. Trenchard were as thick as thieves. It was a wonder that the mistress never suspected that all Ellis needed to betray her secrets was a sufficient offer, and now, with any luck, they were going to get one.

“Ah, Miss Ellis.” John nodded slowly. He was annoyed that Speer hadn’t steered him toward Ellis in the first place. He suspected Speer resented Ellis’s superiority within the household, and in this he was quite right. Now he would have to pay enough money to keep them both happy, which was tedious, but Turton was correct. A valet or a maid could winkle out a family’s secrets quicker than anyone. He had heard tell that half the major powers paid valets and maids to spy for them. He smiled at Ellis, who was waiting in silence. “I wonder if we might be able to come to some arrangement?”

J
ames Trenchard was sitting at a particularly fine Empire desk with ormolu mounts in his office in the Gray’s Inn Road. On the first floor, above a firm of solicitors and at the top of a sweeping staircase, it was a large paneled room with some serious pictures and impressive furniture. Without ever saying it, James had a sort of vision of himself as a gentleman businessman. Most of his contemporaries would have thought of this phrase as an oxymoron, but that was his view and he liked his surroundings to reflect it. There were drawings of Cubitt Town on display, carefully arranged to advantage on a round table in a corner of the room, and a beautiful portrait of Sophia hung above the fireplace. Painted during their stay in Brussels, it captured his daughter at her most beguiling; youthful and confident, staring straight at the onlooker, she was wearing a cream dress with her hair arranged in the style of that time. It was a good likeness, very good really, and a vivid reminder of the girl he knew. Probably for this reason, Anne refused to hang it in Eaton Square as it made her too sad, but James liked to look on his darling lost daughter; he liked to remember her in moments of rather uncharacteristic quiet solitude.

Today, however, he found himself contemplating the letter on his desk. It had been delivered when his secretary was with him, but he wanted to read it in private. Now, he turned it over and over in his plump hands, scrutinizing the florid script and the thick cream paper. He did not need to open it to know who sent it, as he had received an identical letter to tell him he was on the application list for the Athenaeum. This would be the answer, from
Edward Magrath, the secretary of the club. He held his breath—he so desperately wanted to be accepted, he scarcely dared to read it. He knew the Athenaeum was not most people’s idea of a fashionable club. The food was notoriously bad, and in Society it was seen as a London stopping place for an assortment of clerics and academics. But it was still a place for gentlemen to meet, no one could deny it; with the difference that, under their slightly revolutionary rules the club also admitted men of eminence in science, literature, or the arts. They even had members in public service, without significant birth or educational requirements.

This policy made the membership far more diverse than the clubs of St. James’s. That was how William Cubitt had been accepted, and hadn’t James helped him and his brother to build half of fashionable London? Wasn’t that a public service? William had put him up for membership months ago, and when they’d heard nothing, James had pestered him to chase the nomination. He knew he wasn’t ideal member material, even given their more liberal rules—to be the son of a market stall trader was not the sort of lineage much admired by the bastions of the Establishment, but would God be so cruel as to deny him? He knew he would never have a chance of joining White’s or Boodle’s or Brooks’s, or any of the other really smart places, but didn’t he deserve this? Besides, he’d heard that the club needed cash, which he had, and plenty of it. Of course there was a risk he would be snubbed and sneered at, and Anne would never understand what such a place could give him that his home did not, but still, he needed that sense of belonging to the Great World, and if all he had to offer was money, then so be it. Let money be enough.

In fairness to him, there was a part of James, if a small part admittedly, that knew his ambitions were nonsense. That the grudging approval of fools and dandies would add nothing of real value to his life, and yet… he could not control his secret passion for acceptance. It was the engine that drove him, and he must travel as far and as fast as he could.

The door opened and his secretary came in. “Mr. Pope is outside, sir. He would like the honor of an interview.”

“Would he? Then bring him in.”

“I hope I don’t disturb you, Mr. Trenchard,” said Charles, walking briskly round the door, “but your clerk said you were in, and I have some news.” His smile was as warm and his manner as charming as ever.

“Of course.” James nodded, putting the letter down on his desk. He stood to shake the young man’s hand, wondering at the pleasure it gave him just to look upon his grandson. “Won’t you sit down?”

“I won’t, if you don’t mind. I’m too excited.”

“Oh?”

“Lady Brockenhurst has been kind enough to write and tell me how much she and her husband wish to invest. And I believe I have all the money I need.” He was obviously near to bursting, but he restrained himself. He was a fine young fellow, no doubt about it.

“Nobody has all the money they need.” James smiled, but he was very torn. Seeing the chap so full of energy and enthusiasm, his dreams on the verge of coming true, he found it hard to be anything but pleased. Still, he couldn’t delude himself. The strangeness of the case—a great lady in high Society investing a fortune in the business interests of an obscure nobody—was bound to draw comment, and combined with the inexplicable attentions Lady Brockenhurst had showered on Charles in public the other night, it could not be long before someone put two and two together.

Charles hadn’t finished. “With your investment, sir, and hers, it means I have all I need to pay off the mortgage, fund the new looms, retool the factory, and generally improve our output. I can plan my visit to India, organize the supplies of raw cotton, appoint an agent out there, and then sit back and watch as our production moves to the forefront of the industry. Not that I will sit back, of course,” he added with a laugh.

“Of course not.” James smiled, too. Inwardly, he was cursing that he had not undertaken to fund the venture fully in the first place, thereby removing the need for the Countess to intervene.
He could easily have done it, but he’d thought it would make things too smooth for Charles, that the boy ought to learn something about doing business in the modern world, but now he could have kicked himself. Then again, Lady Brockenhurst would have found some other way into Charles’s life. Once she knew who he was, nothing would have kept her away for long. Why oh why had Anne felt she had to tell her? But even as he asked himself this same question for the thousandth time, he understood they were on the path of no return. Their fall would not be long in coming now. “Well”—he chuckled pleasantly—“I confess I’m a little surprised. When I heard the other night that the Countess was taking an interest in your endeavors, I asked myself how likely that was, and I suppose I doubted that she would make good on her promise. But she has. I was wrong, and I am heartily glad I was wrong.”

Charles nodded eagerly. “I’m going to stock up on raw cotton as and when I can get it, until I have enough for a year’s production. That done, I’ll sail for India and put the last piece of the puzzle in place. Then I believe I shall be all set.”

“All set, indeed. And you still have no clue as to the reason for Lady Brockenhurst’s interest? She never said anything about why she wanted to help? It seems so odd.”

“I agree.” Charles shook his head in disbelief. “She likes me. She ‘approves’ of me, whatever that means. She asks me to her house. But she’s never explained how she came to hear of me in the first place.”

“Well, well. One mustn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“No. And I’ll find out the truth one day. She did say that I reminded her of someone she was once fond of. But that can’t be the real reason, can it?” He raised his eyebrows at the very idea.

“I shouldn’t have thought so. There must be more to it than that.” What a good liar I am, thought James. I did not suspect it of myself, but clearly I can look into a man’s eyes and lie to him as easily as I can write my own name. We learn about ourselves with every day that passes.

Absentmindedly, he picked up the letter from the desk and opened it. It was indeed from Edward Magrath. He skimmed the
first couple of paragraphs to the last sentence and there it was: “And we take great pleasure in accepting you as a member of the Athenaeum.” He smiled, but rather wryly, as he wondered how long it would be before they came to him and asked for his resignation.