Death at St. James's Palace (32 page)

“How unpleasant for you.”

“You don’t like him, do you?”

“I can’t stand the fellow, particularly after his latest exploit.”

“Which was?”

The Duke coloured and momentarily lost his composure. “It was a family matter. One that I do not care to discuss.”

“I’m sorry, I did not mean to intrude.”

“No, of course not.” The young man cleared his throat. “Well, Mr. Rawlings, can I be of any further assistance?”

This was his cue to depart and John took it. “No, your Grace, you have been most kind. However, if you should reconsider and decide to tell me who was the unidentified page-of-honour, I can assure you that you will be assisting Sir John Fielding greatly. Now I must take my leave. I ordered my coachman to return in an hour. He should be here by now.”

Irish Tom may have many faults, a penchant for drinking and singing being two of them, but unpunctual he was not. The coach was drawn up outside, John’s strong dark horses standing quietly, obviously having enjoyed their break as much as their driver.

“I’ve a mind, Sir,” said Tom, as he helped the Apothecary in and pulled up the step behind him, “to go out the other way, just for the pleasure of driving over that bridge. Would you have any objection to that?”

“As long as it doesn’t take us too far out of our way, no.”

They swept round the house, staring at the beautiful south front, its gracious lines displaying only two towers, one on each corner. On the first floor of each tower were stone balconies, one beneath each major window, and a slight movement on one of these galleries caught the Apothecary’s eye. A boy sat there, or rather lay, on a chaise, scarcely visible behind the sheltering balustrade. But at the sound of the coach he raised himself and, very briefly, peered over to see the carriage below.

It was a haunting face, even at that distance. A face dominated by enormous eyes that gazed sadly downwards, a face so thin that the skin seemed stretched to breaking point over the prominent bones. Then the boy lowered himself out of sight.

“Did you see that?” John called to Irish Tom.

“I did, Sir. Made me think of a changeling. We have lots of those in Ireland.”

“Do you now?” John answered, and laughed. But inside his head the picture of the boy lingered, and the more the Apothecary thought about it the more certain he became that somewhere or other, and not so long ago at that, he had quite definitely seen the child before.

Chapter 120

I
t was quite extraordinary. It was almost as if John were acting under compulsion. Ever since he had left Fishergate Place strange thoughts had flown through his mind, thoughts that he couldn’t properly identify, memories that he couldn’t quite grasp. Overriding all these, however, had been the fixed idea that he must visit Lady Mary Goward once more. That somehow, exerting all his powers as a healer, he must help her to speak, impress on her the need to tell him everything about her past.

Yet even while these notions overwhelmed him, the professional part of his brain, the part that controlled the apothecary who had studied diligently and for so long to gain knowledge, knew that such ideas were sheer folly, that it was highly unlikely that the widow would ever fully regain her powers after her apoplectic seizure. But still the mood was upon him, to the extent that he instructed Tom to collect Emilia and Sir Gabriel from Marybone Gardens while he picked up a hackney coach and returned to London alone, telling the driver to head towards Hyde Park and that more specific directions would be given later.

All the while he drove, John continued to mull over the situation, picturing the people involved in the mystery, certain that the answer now lay close at hand, could he but grasp the thread, Sir John had believed the children in the case held the key: Lucinda, Frederick Drummond, also called Lord Lomond, Aminta, Elizabeth Chudleigh’s dead baby, and the missing black boy, if there were such a creature. But how to fit them into the puzzle and then see the final solution? And what of the Witherspoon twins? Had their sister really miscarried George Goward’s child, or had the child lived and was even now lying concealed somewhere, ready to be used by its aunt and uncle as a tool for vengeance against Lady Mary?

It was as he was thinking these things, staring out of the window, gazing but not really seeing, that John suddenly came to his senses at the sudden appearance of one of the very people he had been considering. Aminta Goward, or Wilson as she preferred to be known, was walking down the street. Ebony James a few paces before her, clearing the way for his mistress. Today she was dressed and presented even more unconventionally than usual, her glorious red hair hanging straight, a simple hat topped by a bow on her head, her gown totally without hoops, blue and white, utterly artless, utterly stunning.

John couldn’t help himself. He lowered the window and called out, “Miss Wilson, over here.”

She looked startled, then recognised the man leaning out of the coach and dropped a demure curtsey. Acting utterly on impulse, John ordered the hackney driver to stop, then jumped out, paid him off, and joined her.

He bowed low. “May I say how delightful you look?”

Her eyes twinkled. “You may say it by all means.”

“And where is Jack Morocco today?”

“He is actually working - he does occasionally, you know - giving a fencing lesson to some privileged puppy.”

“You sound as if you don’t approve.”

“Of Jack working or the recipient of the lesson?”

“Both perhaps.”

“As I told you, Jack Morocco is a free spirit and will do as he pleases when he pleases. As for the puppy, no I don’t approve of those brought up with too much money and not enough hardship.”

“You suffered as a child.” It was a statement not a question.

“Of course, but I don’t regret it. It made me so much stronger, I am more than aware of that.”

“Still you must blame your father and stepmother for not wanting to take you in and bring you up.”

“They are not worth the blaming,” said Aminta factually.

“They are - were - far too stupid even to consider. I’m on my way to see her now,” she added surprisingly.

“You mean Lady Mary?”

“Who else?”

“Then may I accompany you?”

“Of course, though first I must get flowers.” She took some money from her purse. “Ebony, go and buy blooms. Don’t be long and hurry back. Mr. Rawlings and I will make our way to South Audley Street.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” the black boy answered in a voice that made John smile. The child’s original negro tones were fast disappearing beneath an accent extremely like Jack Morocco’s own.

When the child had gone, John said, “I am surprised that you are calling on Lady Mary. I didn’t realise you were on those terms with her.”

“I am not,” Aminta answered simply, “but I heard that she had been struck down and I was moved to call out of pity. I doubt she will even know who I am.”

“I wonder. Will you tell her you are her late husband’s daughter?”

“I might. I shall have to wait and see her condition.”

“Let us hope that it has improved.”

But long faces answered the door of the gracious house where Lady Mary resided when in London and, seeing them, John doubted that he and Aminta would even be given permission to enter. However, there he was to be surprised. It appeared that the sick woman’s physician was forward-thinking and believed in as much stimulation as possible for those who had suffered from apoplexy - or so they were informed by a fierce looking woman who announced herself as Lady Mary’s helper.

“Then we may go up?”

“Just for ten minutes. Milady is washed and ready.”

And obviously bed-ridden, thought the Apothecary.

The room in which the sick woman lay was stifling, full of the stench of decay. Casting his mind back to when he had first seen her, fat and frothy, her little-girl voice piping, her stays too tight, John was horrified by the change in Lady Mary Goward. Now she lay like a great marshmallow, pale and terrible, her face distorted, her mouth on the twist, and yet the expression in her eyes sent a shiver through him. He felt certain from the very way she looked at him, that she knew absolutely everything that was going on.

“Two visitors. Milady,” said the helper loudly, as if the sufferer’s hearing had also been affected.

John bowed out of sheer force of habit and Miss Wilson gave a bob of the knees. Lady Mary just stared, that same frighteningly knowing stare.

Aminta had obviously judged the situation rapidly and found the poor wretch too feeble to be told the truth about who Aminta really was. So, “I am a neighbour,” she said instead. “I have brought you some flowers to cheer you. My boy will be here with them in a moment.”

There was no response, just total silence and the same unflickering gaze.

“I hope you remember me, Madam,” John said cheerfully, feeling utterly craven for even smiling in the presence of such affliction.

The dreadful eyes regarded him without blinking. She hates me, thought the Apothecary. She associates me with Sir John Fielding and she believes that he caused her downfall.

“Nice to have visitors,” said the helper, still bellowing. “Shall we try and say something?”

The eyes moved sideways but there was no other response.

There was a sound in the hallway and Ebony James’s voice rang out. “My Mistress is with Milady. These are her flowers.”

“May he bring them up?” Aminta asked the helper.

“Certainly. Nice to have blooms, isn’t it,” she yelled into Lady Mary’s ear.

Small feet pounded up the staircase and a second later the door opened and the black boy stood there, his little face grinning broadly beneath his stylish turban, his arms full of flowers.

“I’m here. Mistress,” he said.

The figure in the bed heaved like a whale as Lady Mary jerked upright. John, amazed that she could have managed even that, stared at her and saw her face contort into that of a gargoyle, then heard a ghastly screeching scream come from the distorted mouth.

“No,” cried the agonised woman, and sat totally straight for a moment before she fell back on her pillows, motionless.

The Apothecary ran to her side and felt for her pulse. There was none.

“Clear the room,” he said to the helper. “I think Lady Mary is dead.”

The fastest running servant in the house had been sent flying for a physician but even though the doctor came almost immediately, nothing could have saved her. She was dead when she hit the bed. The moment that Aminta and Ebony James had been hurried away, the Apothecary had buried his head in that billowing bosom and listened for the sound of Mary Goward’s heart. There had been nothing but silence. He had looked up at the helper and shaken his head.

“She’s gone?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“But why?”

“A massive heart seizure, I imagine.”

“But what could have caused that so suddenly?”

Again John had shaken his head but inwardly he thought he knew. Had it been the sight of a black boy of about ten years old that had frightened her, quite literally, to death? Had she thought that at long last her past had caught up with her and the day of reckoning had come?

He had stayed with the body until the physician had arrived. Had reported all that he had seen, and the measures he had used to ascertain death, then taken his leave. Now, as he descended the stairs he saw that Aminta and Ebony James awaited him in the hall, the child sobbing uncontrollably in his mistress’s arms. The boy turned a large glistening eye in John’s direction as he heard the Apothecary approach.

“Oh Masser, did I kill her?” His aristocratic accent had vanished again.

“Of course you didn’t. She was very ill and could have gone at any time.”

“But she looked at me, Masser. Oh, how she did look at me.

“What do you mean?”

“As if she knew me. But I ain’t never seen her before, so how could she?”

Aminta spoke, quite firmly. “Ebony, you are to forget this whole matter and cease to upset yourself. You imagined that Lady Mary was staring at you. She had had a seizure and it had made her eyes strange. Now come along. We are going home.”

“I will escort you,” said John. “And then I shall make my way to Bow Street, Sir John Fielding must be informed of this latest extraordinary development.”

“Tell me,” asked Aminta as they stepped out into the street, “do you ever see your wife?”

“Of course I do. I was with her only this morning.”

“And before then?”

“A few days ago.”

She clicked her tongue against her teeth and smiled capti- vatingly. “You don’t keep a mistress as well, do you?”

“Of course not. What a preposterous suggestion.”

“Well, you would hardly have the time I suppose,” she answered, and laughed so wickedly that John found himself joining in.

The court at Bow Street was just rising at the end of the day’s session and John, approaching on foot, found himself swept along in the melee as those members of the
beau monde
who made it their amusement to while away an hour or two watching a blind man administer justice, poured into the street. Somewhat to his astonishment, the Apothecary noticed a familiar figure amongst them. Digby Turnbull had been in court that day. John called his name and the honest citizen turned his head.