Page 78 of Murder at the Seven Dials
The magistrate held up a thick finger. “A cloud has hung over you since the duel with Neatham. Becoming mixed up with a duchess is throwing oil onto the fire, and well you know it. Bow Street doesn’t need it.Idon’t need it.”
Hugh wasn’t naive—he knew how things would look. It was why he’d asked her to stay away from Bow Street. He’d be content to remain invisible to the ton for the rest of his life…just not at the duchess’s expense. He couldn’t walk away from this case when he knew she would not let it go until her last breath. Now that the duke was about to be released into the custody of some institution in the north, where he could be forgotten, swept under the rug… Once the duchess learned of it, she would panic. Do something reckless.Again.
“St. John is off limits,” Sir Gabriel announced, his voice booming. Hugh could only nod. Arguing would earn him nothing but a desk assignment. Anyone who got on the chief magistrate’s wrong side found themselves with a stack of files and paperwork no one else wanted to be saddled with.
Hugh quit the office and stormed down to the ground level, where his own cramped closet of an office was located near the back of the building. He hadn’t gotten four steps from the base of the stairs when he heard a raspy, pre-pubescent voice hurtling profanities at the front desk clerk.
“I’m tellin’ ya, ya nugget brain, I’ve got to see him now, an’ it be important—more important than what you’re doin’!”
Hugh’s heels dragged to a stop. He backed up and entered the front room. Sure enough, Sir stood before the clerk, who was busy scowling at the boy, his cheeks red.
“Now listen here, you scum sucker, this is the last time I’ll tell you to get out—”
“Sir,” Hugh bellowed. The boy twisted his rail-thin upper body toward him.
“Finally. Been tryin’ to get this fish-faced clod to tell me where you was for a quarter hour.”
Hugh raised a hand to the clerk, a signal to let it be. “Why are you here?”
He hadn’t asked the boy to report to him. For a heartbeat, he hoped Sir brought news of another crime, something to drive Hugh’s mind from the Lovejoy murder. From the duchess. It was what Sir Gabriel wanted. No doubt it would be easier, better, to move on and leave everything having to do with the duke and duchess in the past.
“Your fancy lady,” Sir said. “I been keeping my peepers on her, just in case, and I thought you might want to know where she’s been.”
He braced himself. “Nowhere good, I imagine.”
“The workhouse called St. Emmanuel’s. Got there by a hansom and then left again. Heard her tell the jarvey Bedford Street.”
“Myaddress? Did you follow her there?”
“Nah, I knew you was here,” he answered.
Absently, Hugh took a few ha’pennies from his pock and tossed them to Sir. “Nicely done. Good initiative, lad.”
The copper coins disappeared into one of the boy’s many pockets, and Sir tugged the brim of his cap. Hugh stared over the boy’s head, awareness ripping into him. She’d gone to the workhouse to find the footman, to hunt down the letter Lady Wimbly had wanted burned. It was dangerous. Desperate.
She knew.The duchess had learned of her husband’s imminent removal to the institution. She was acting rashly and was going to confront the footman alone.
“Come with me,” Hugh growled, and then bolted toward the station’s front door. Sir followed, a shadow on Hugh’s heels.
There was no need for a cab; Hugh’s home on the corner of Bedford Street and Maiden Lane could be reached in only a few minutes if he ran—which he did. He kept stride with Sir, the young boy holding onto his hat and pumping his arms.
The duchess hadn’t taken her driver, Carrigan. Which meant she’d most likely absconded from Violet House without any of the staff knowing.
Hugh barreled up the front steps to his home and swung the door wide. “Basil!”
The valet entered the hall, dressed to go out with his coat and hat. “I was just about to come to Bow Street, sir. You had a visitor, the Duchess of—”
“Where is she?” Hugh peered into the front room, but it was vacant.
“Gone, sir. She left a message for you. Said it was quite urgent.” Basil took a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “I hope you’re not angry, but I had a look and indeed, I thought it was prudent to come to you right away.”
Breathless from the run and from his bottled apprehension, he took the note.
The footman’s name is Fellows. The letter is on a boat at St. K. wharves. The Jackdaw. Meet me there. I’ll be careful.
Hugh crumpled the paper in his fist. “Like hell she will be,” he grumbled. “Damn woman!”
If St. John and the marchioness were involved, as Hugh suspected, who better to assign the killing than a man they’d rescued from a workhouse? The letter. It had to be something incriminating. Something the killer held onto for insurance.
