Thick As Thieves (16 page)

"I have been robbed!" I gasped. Richard grabbed the note. Hennie jumped up to read over his shoulder.

"All the silver stolen!" she howled. "Lorene's good silver. Full table settings for twenty-four. I wonder if the serving dishes are gone as well."

"That idiot, Polke, had not even the wits to call in Bow Street. I must go to London at once, Richard."

"There is no point setting out in the middle of the night. We shall leave early in the morning and be there by noon hour."

"Mercy, I must send a note off to Timothy," Hennie said, and went to the study.

"I shan't sleep a wink. I think I should go tonight," I said. "Ironic that my London house should be robbed, after scheming to lure Tom into robbing me in Brighton. This was not the work of Tom, of course. He takes only money and jewelry."

After a frowning pause, Richard said, "He might take other valuables, if he had time and privacy in an empty house. I don't rule Tom out. He knows you are safely in Brighton."

"Grindley!" I exclaimed. "He had no real account to give of his whereabouts last night. And he lied about Naismith, too."

"What do you mean?"

"He said it was Clive Naismith he was with. I have reason to believe it was that scoundrel Robert."

"But if Grindley and Naismith were here in Brighton . . ." He examined the note again. "Polke doesn't say at what hour the house was robbed. Did he stay the night with his family, I wonder, and only discover the robbery in the morning?"

"I must get home and ask him these things."

Richard reached out and placed his hand on my wrist. "Let me think a moment," he said. I waited, and he began murmuring to himself. "It could be a ruse to get you back to London, to give Tom easy picking of this house."

"Grindley was asking pointed questions about where I keep my jewelry. I did not tell him, of course. I think you are right. He is trying to get me out, so he can rob this house."

"It looks that way. But then, he would not expect you to take your servants."

"All the world knows my butler is a drunkard. The other servants would be asleep on the top floor at three or four in the morning. I wager the sly rogue is skulking in the shadows this minute, waiting to see if I leave. What should we do?"

A sly smile curved his lips. "We shall oblige him."

"I don't understand."

"We shall leave, head for London, and sneak back, to catch him red-handed. We may not have another chance like this. We may be mistaken, but it is worth a try. What do you say?"

After a very brief consideration, I said, "I can be ready in five minutes."

"No hurry. Tom has no way of knowing you have received that note from Brighton. Although he would know the evening coach does bring special delivery messages from London. As you did not mention the theft at your party, he might have been on the
qui vive
to see if a messenger from the London coach came here. I am assuming Tom is either one of our friends, or has access to them."

"I do not consider Grindley a good friend by any means, but somehow or other, he always shows up every place, including my own party. When shall we leave?"

"Let us give it, say, an hour, to make sure Tom gets his message." I noticed he avoided using Grindley's name.

"Brockley has got himself an ironclad alibi. He is playing cards with Prinny at the pavilion tonight," I mentioned.

He gave me a disparaging look. "Do you think your aunt is also involved, Eve?"

"No, I think she is being duped entirely by the old tar."

I refilled our teacups. "This is not the sort of quiet evening I had in mind when we spoke of it earlier," Richard said, which at least showed me he regretted missing that treat.

"There will be plenty of evenings."

He looked at me askance, causing me to fear I had assumed too much. But when he spoke, it was not of that. "I have something to confess," he said, rather humbly. "It was not Linda who inserted that advertisement announcing your departure for Brighton. I did it myself, for the purpose of informing the world, and Tom, that you would be here. That was my plan, to use you for bait, from the minute you mentioned coming to Brighton. I didn't know you then.... I put you into this dreadful house for that sole reason. I never intended for you to actually be robbed, of course, but this is my fault nevertheless, and I shall replace whatever has been stolen."

Other than telling me it was he and not Linda who had inserted the advertisement, the only new twist here was that word "sole." He had implied earlier that he found me attractive, that he wished to have me living next door for my own sake.

"That is not news to me. I suspected as much all along," I said, feigning indifference.

"I am truly sorry, Eve."

"If I am Tom's victim, I have no one to blame but myself. I started this whole thing by taking Lady Dormere's ring."

We sipped tea for a while in silence, both thinking our own thoughts. "I shall change into a more comfortable gown before we leave. I wonder what is keeping Hennie. We shall take her with us, of course. Tom will be more likely to break in if none of the family is at home."

"I don't like to subject an older lady to such a tiring night. We will have to walk back to your house from some distance, so that Tom does not see our carriage. Perhaps she would prefer to spend the night at my house. I'll ask her, while you change."

It was a relief to get out of that tight gown. I chose an older, dark gown—older in case it got soiled, and dark for concealment in the shadows. Of course, Richard's admission that he had not immediately been smitten with my beauty rankled, but I felt confident things had changed since then. He had not been acting last night in the fog. I regretted the loss of Lorene's silver, but I had high hopes of recovering it. Overall, this Brighton visit had been a wonderfully exciting adventure. I did not regret it a bit, even if I never saw the silver again.

Hennie came bustling into my room as I tidied my hair. "I am going to spend the night at Dalton's, Eve," she said. "I don't relish a dart to London in the middle of the night if you don't need me. I added a line on the bottom of my note to Timothy, in case he comes."

Brockley was by no means off my list of suspects. "Have you sent the note yet?" I asked.

"Dalton is taking care of it for me."

I nipped smartly downstairs. "About that note, Richard. Do you think we should send it?"

"Why not? In the unlikely case that Brockley is involved, he won't let Mrs. Henderson's presence next door stop him. In fact, it implies we trust him."

"That's true. She believes we are really going to London. I did not tell her the difference."

He nodded. "We'll take my carriage. My team are faster."

"And you have a gun."

"Let us hope it does not come to that."

Chapter Seventeen

Both back and front doors of Lady Grieve's house were much in use during the next hour. We wanted Tom, if he was watching, to see that some commotion was going forth to alert him that we had received the note, and were preparing to flee to London. Ruthven went out by the front door to summon the carriage. Richard accompanied Hennie to his house, and brought back his own overnight case. All this activity was to distract Tom from observing the back door, where a footman was dispatched for the Bow Street officer, and where the officer appeared in person thirty minutes later, wearing the livery of Richard's footmen. Did I mention it was a dark bottle green livery, very handsome?

"Frank Ketchen, of Bow Street, Miss Denver," he said, and shook my hand. "I borrowed this disguise to fool Tom."

As he spoke, he darted to the window and closed the curtains. Next he checked to see that all the doors were secure. He was a little gray slug of a man with thinning gray hair and brown circles around his sunken eyes. That "slug" referred to his complexion; in movement he was like a fly, darting hither and thither. He looked as if you could blow him over with a flip of your fan, but he carried a gun, and assured me he could shoot the eye out of a pigeon at a hundred paces.

He was to be on guard indoors in case Tom came before we returned. Richard's watchman patrolled the grounds each niht.

I asked Ketchen if he required anything to assist his vigil. "Coffee. Strong, black, and lots of it," he said. "I would be obliged if you'd tell your servants they are to take orders from me, in case of an incident."

I called Ruthven and gave the order for him to relay. I also ordered Ketchen's coffee. Ruthven suggested a flask for Richard and me to take with us. He was that thoughtful sort of butler. At last Ketchen sat down, but not to rest. He drew out a notebook and took a description of my silverware. I could only describe the flatware, as I did not know what else had been taken. "Oh, and one painting," I added. "Not valuable."

"Subject of said picture?"

"An old man. Just his head," I replied, and described the gilt frame in more detail.

"Occupants of house?"

"Jimmie Polke, footman."

He even asked to see Polke's note and inquired whether the scribbling was Polke's. "I am not an expert. It certainly looks like his writing. It is written on my stationery."

"Any criminal record? You'd be surprised how many robberies are done by servants."

"He has been with my family for fifteen years without stealing so much as a teaspoon."

"That you know about," he murmured under his breath, and jotted down "No known criminal record" beside Polke's name.

The sixty minutes between our decision to leave and our actual leaving seemed more like six hours, but at last the carriage was waiting. I snatched up a closed pitcher of coffee and my bonnet and we were off. I was surprised to see Richard's traveling carriage and a team of four, when we were only driving a mile out of town. I said, "Would your curricle not be faster and less bother?"

"We would not drive a curricle all the way to London at night. We do not want Tom to suspect our trick. Let him see we are setting off on a journey."

"I had been looking forward to a ride in the open carriage," I complained, but got into the lumbering coach and had to settle for an open window.

Richard was in a feverish state of excitement, as I was myself. "This might be the break we have been waiting for," he said, smiling softly to himself. "You will be a heroine, Eve."

"All I did was get myself robbed. You are the hero, sir. It was your idea to have Tom rob me, and also your idea to make this mock trip to London to entrap him."

He smiled modestly. "I set my mind to it that I wanted to catch Tom, not only because he robbed me, but because he sets a bad example. He gives young men the idea they can steal with impunity, making a laughingstock of the law. Since Bow Street seemed powerless to catch him, I decided to give it a go. Mind you, Ketchen will want his share of the glory. It will mean a promotion for him, I should think. Some of the stolen gems carry a reward on their heads."

"We should give the money to charity, Richard. There are so many people less fortunate than we."

"I would like to do something for homeless children. Education is the magic key to lift them out of a life of misery and eventually crime."

That was the sort of noble mood we were in, feeling we were a couple of heroes, out to save the world. We drove north for a mile through the dark night, peering out the window at frequent intervals to see we were not being followed.

It was a suitable night for danger and intrigue. A fingernail of moon and a sprinkling of infinitesimally small stars looked lost in the enormity of the black heavens above. They did little to illuminate the countryside. A wind soughed through the trees by the border of the road. It sounded human—a sigh, or a moan.

Before we had quite decided whether to establish an orphanage or a good day school with the reward money, we came to the crossroad that had been settled as a good place to turn the carriage around. The horses slowed nearly to a halt. As we were halfway into our trip, I decided to take advantage of the slow pace to pour us a cup of coffee.

"My groom is going to drive in here and back the team out, since the road is too narrow to make a turn," Richard explained. The team slowly made the turn.

"It is a very narrow side road, and with a ditch on either side. If you had driven your curricle—"

"John Groom can turn this rig on a penny," he replied complacently. The team began to back up.

The next sound was a wild whinnying from the team, and a shout of "Whoa! Steady, lads!" from John Groom, as the carriage leaned precariously into the ditch.

"I daresay John Groom cannot see that penny in the dark," I said.

Richard stuck his head out the window and hollered, "Pull ahead and try again."

The nags moved forward, and we slowly eased out of the ditch. "Why do you not continue along this road until you come to a farm, and turn in the normal way?" I suggested.

"I don't see a farm up ahead. There are no lights."

"Farmers would be in bed at this hour. There must be a farm, or why would there be a road?"

"It would take too long." Again the jingle of the harness and shuffle of hooves indicated that the horses were being backed up, although the carriage did not immediately move.

"The horses are frightened. Give them a touch of the whip," Richard called out the window.

There was a gentle crack from the whip, and the team moved more quickly, pushing the carriage right into the ditch this time. It did a half turn in the air, throwing me against the door. Richard tumbled down on top of me, cursing a blue streak.

"You're hurting my arm!" I shouted, trying to extract it from beneath his shoulder.

He tried to get up, but had difficulty as my door was acting as the floor of the carriage, and there was very little foot room. John Groom came to our aid. The other carriage door was in the roof position, looking up at the sky. The groom heaved the door open and gave Richard a hand out.

"How are the nags?" was Richard's first concern. Never mind that I was lying in a painful heap on the floor.

"I stopped them before they followed the cart into the ditch. They're right as rain."