Page 15 of Taken to the Grave
She turned away to sooth her youngest daughter, squirming in a highchair, her nose red and runny, tears sparkling on her long eyelashes.
“Do you know of anyone specific he’d angered lately?” Hugh asked.
She shook her head, lifting the little one from the chair and hinging her on the hip.
“He was working a steady job at a gaming hell,” Hugh went on. “Did he ever speak of anyone he met with there who might have had a vendetta against him?”
Mrs. Givens bobbed the sniffling baby on her hip as she went to the slim window in the kitchen. She stared through it with a kind of wistful expression that Hugh couldn’t make out. Not sadness exactly.
“He weren’t just at the Seven Sins,” she answered listlessly, eyes still on the window. “He had a few other jobs.”
Hugh frowned. To have even one job was a feat for Mr. Givens. “Do you know where?”
“He wouldn’t tell me a thing about it,” she said. “Said he couldn’t, that I might go and run my gob and then he’d be in for it. But he were acting strange the last few weeks. Never seen him so twitchy.”
Audrey’s vision came to mind, and how the two unidentified men who’d approached Givens had accused him of running his own gob. He’d known something. Something he shouldn’t have.
“Do you have any idea what kind of work he was doing elsewhere? Security again?”
She closed her eyes as the child on her hip continued to squirm. An interrogation wasn’t something the woman needed this morning. And Hugh wasn’t on the murder case anyhow.
“Officers from Bow Street will be investigating,” he said, curbing his questions. “I’m here to see if Sir—Davy—had been by.”
She brightened a little, hearing her son’s name. But the corner of her mouth tugged down. “No. Should he’ve been?”
Hugh hesitated, but then decided as Sir’s mother, she was due the truth. Briefly, he explained how he’d been at Vauxhall at the time her husband’s body had been discovered, and the unfortunate occurrence of her son coming upon the scene. Mrs. Givens took a seat at the table, her youngest whining and wriggling in her lap.
“And you haven’t seen him since?”
Hugh shook his head. “I’d hoped to find him here.”
The only other place he could think of where Sir would seek any comfort would be in Whitechapel, with his past acquaintances. The gangs of the East End were rife with boys his age and having quit the slums for a time to work for a toff, Sir might face opposition there. But at thirteen, Sir had grown headstrong and acerbic. Lately, even Hugh had been the target of his contempt.
Mrs. Givens set the wriggling child onto the floor, which only made her wails increase, and then got to her feet. “My boy knows how to mind himself out there.”
He nodded, knowing she was right, and hoping that Sir’s time with the beau monde hadn’t polished away the grit required to survive on the streets.
Hugh took his leave and hailed another hack on Fenschurch. He had two more destinations in mind for that morning, the first of which was The Chesterfield at Portman Square. The former grand home had been renovated into subscription apartmentsfor fashionable young men of means. But when the porter greeted Hugh at the front entrance, he was informed that a Mr. Travis Comstock did not lease any of the twelve apartments within. Furthermore, the porter, who had been in his position for seven years, had never heard of the man. Hugh thanked him and left, certain that Comstock had deceived Mr. and Mrs. Silas about multiple things regarding himself, and that he’d deceived Bethany too. If the young womanhadeloped, she most likely did not know her new husband as well as she thought.
Another, shorter ride in a hired hack delivered him to number four Bow Street. Pangs of nostalgia and melancholy chimed through him as he took in the building’s familiar façade. This place had been a second home to him. In fact, it had been his primary home, and Bedford Street a place to rest his head. Now, however, he had the baffling sensation of wearing ill-fitting clothes as he entered through the front door, nodding hello to the front desk clerk, Davis, who replied with an uncertain bob of his chin. He didn’t stop Hugh when he started in the direction of Sir Gabriel’s office. The magistrate’s court would be breaking soon, if they hadn’t already, and the formidable knight, appointed thus for his service to the Crown during the Peninsula Wars, would be back in his office.
Hugh had spent the last few months sitting in Parliament, trying to find some cause to champion, to focus on. But for the most part, Parliament had appeared to Hugh as a bunch of blustering men arguing over topics that would in no way benefit the lowly masses they governed. They were sorely out of touch with the realities of the working class and working poor. Every time he attended a session, he left with more respect for Sir Gabriel’s position. As magistrate, he heard evidence and testimony and was able to cast judgment quickly over whether a hearing from the Grand Jury was necessary or not. He was by nomeans the final authority on whether a man was found guilty or innocent, but he moved the wheels of justice along efficiently.
Sir Gabriel was a man of action. Of principle. And so, suspecting that he was the person Mr. Gye had convinced at Bow Street to stay mum about the two dead bodies found at Vauxhall disturbed Hugh. That Sir Gabriel also did not wish for his niece’s disappearance to be investigated also warranted concern.
Hugh’s fist came down on the door to the chief magistrate’s office, bringing about the immediate customary bellow of,“What is it?”
He entered, and Sir Gabriel glanced up from papers on his desk to see who was bothering him. His annoyance slipped marginally, then snapped back into place.
“Neatham,” he said. “I figured I’d be seeing you in here at some point today.”
He shuffled his papers together, leaned back in his chair, and gestured impatiently to the chairs in front of his desk. Hugh remained standing. He could usually mask whatever emotions he was feeling, but Sir Gabriel knew him too well.
“Ach, come now, there’s no reason to look like that.”
“Like what?” he asked.
“Disappointed.” Sir Gabriel sat forward. “I told Rebecca not to visit you about Bethany and for good reason. There’s no mystery, no crime, except idiocy. The girl left with the intention of eloping.”
