Anatomy of Murder

3

Harriet had been aware of Isabella’s letters to Fitzraven in her possession and the necessity of reading them, but in the rush of the last days she had found it relatively simple to avoid the task. They had not been mentioned at the conclusion of their first interview with Miss Marin, and Harriet had assumed that a tacit agreement had been reached between all those present that they would be read and then returned without comment, unless comment was particularly called for. She had not liked to do so, however; it was a gross intrusion, and her own liking for the soprano had made the issue uncomfortable. Now she opened the package on her lap without any feeling other than a profound sympathy. Crowther had been right. The dead had no privacy at all.

The first letter was written from Milan and was a cautious note saying that she was glad Mr. Fitzraven had written and she would be pleased to know more of him. Harriet smiled. She could imagine that Isabella would have wished to say a great deal more, but that Morgan had been authoritative and insisted on knowing something of Fitzraven’s intentions before allowing Isabella to admit he was her father.

Harriet glanced up. Her son, Stephen, sat opposite her in the carriage in his best Sunday clothes and cradling on his lap a large model of the Splendor, James’s last and most loved command. The model had been made for him by two of Harriet’s servants at Caveley while the family was in London; both were former naval men as devoted to the boy as they had been to the father. Her housekeeper’s husband, James’s particular servant on all his commands, had recruited those of the crew he thought sufficiently trustworthy to people the vessel with little figures, and the little painted carvings had been sent back with letters and dispatches of the navy. The result was magnificent and had been sent up from the country some days previously with an enormous quantity of cheese, butter and eggs. These last had been welcomed with delight by the housekeeper at Berkeley Square and applauded as paradigms.

Harriet herself had sat at Stephen’s side while he composed his thank-you letter to the boatbuilders. He had done so with painful concentration in his own hand, and she helped a little with phrasing and mended his pen. Harriet could imagine his literary style being praised in the high stone kitchen at Caveley for days, and the little boy’s pleasure being spoken about even now on the open seas. Stephen had asked if he might bring the ship to show his Papa, and after a moment she had agreed. Now he balanced it on his lap, guarding it from every jerk and dip of the road that the Earl of Sussex’s suspension could not iron out, and when he was not lost in contemplation of the rigging, he peered out of the window. He looked, she realized, resolute. Harriet smiled and opened the next letter.

It must have been this note that had led to Fitzraven’s commission to go abroad for His Majesty’s. In it, Miss Marin said that if circumstances allowed, she would be very glad to spend some time in London. She said further that it would be a great pleasure to meet in person with Mr. Fitzraven; she would meet him and listen “with an open heart” to all he had to say, and do so in hopes of developing a fuller friendship.

Harriet could easily imagine Fitzraven coming to see Harwood with this letter in his hand-how he would have boasted of his cleverness in securing such a positive beginning to negotiations with Miss Marin. To Harwood it would look as if the prize of having the celebrated Isabella Marin singing on his stage was within his reach; to Fitzraven it would seem his luck had finally rewarded his merits and that his bastard daughter would open up a world of new influence, money and connections. And Isabella? Harriet looked out of the window, where the new buildings along Gray’s Inn Road were giving way to fields and hedgerow still dewy with the early hour. Smoke reared and bent from the chimney stacks, and Harriet’s fingers tapped on the paper in her lap. Isabella was a romantic. She had seen the possibility of redemption for her own fouled childhood; for her mother knocked down in the mud of the street. She had wished to save Fitzraven and call him Father, and now she lay, lost herself, in His Majesty’s Theatre while the street outside silted up with the tribute of yellow roses. A touching image, but not what she had had in mind.

How had their meeting been? Isabella, trying not to be disappointed in her father. Fitzraven, finding himself on short commons from Harwood’s bankers, and his daughter defended by the indomitable Morgan. It would have been indeed the moment for some enterprising agent of the French to notice him, and see a man with connections and ambition; to whom loyalty was nothing when it could be parlayed into money or influence; who wanted nothing more than to ferret out information from those who liked to have their business concealed.

To be an agent of the French would act like an aphrodisiac on Fitzraven: secrecy, knowledge, money, power-revenge perhaps on all those such as Sandwich who would not be his friend. Harriet could imagine that, if she had been in the position of an agent of the French, she would have thought him an excellent character to put to work. He would also be able to carry instructions and money from France to those already in place in London without arousing suspicion.

She looked again at Isabella’s handwriting. It was graceful and flowing and used a great quantity of very fine paper. Then back in London, Fitzraven perhaps could not resist still spying for old reasons, his personal strategies, and, already having to step around Morgan, found in the affection between Isabella and Bywater another frustration. It would have been another opportunity to feel himself at first hard done by, then superior, controlling.

Stephen sat up a little straighter and Harriet realized the carriage had turned into Trevelyan’s driveway. The little boy looked at her with an air of slight nervousness. She put her hand on his knee and, meeting his blue eyes with her own emerald gaze, said, “Stephen, remember, if Papa still seems strange it is only because of his illness. He loves us. Be brave, as he would be.”

The carriage door opened and one of the footmen let down the step. Harriet was handed down first, then Stephen was lifted out, still clutching his model. The footman ruffled Stephen’s hair and winked at him. The boy smiled. Harriet thought it best not to see the exchange, but was grateful, then stepped smartly forward as Dr. Trevelyan emerged from the portico to greet them.

Ripley was quiet for a space. Jocasta sat opposite him in the back of the chophouse and Sam was frisking with Boyo under the table.

“It’s a list.”

“That, Ripley, I can see, even with no reading-but of what?”

Ripley put his hand up to his chin as if to try and find the bit of fluff that was starting to sprout, and twisted the paper around so it sat between them.

“These are names of boats, I think. I recognize one or two from reports of battles with the Frenchies. They’re some of them written out full, some of them noted quick, like. This here at the top. . and here. .” his finger drifted farther down the page and jabbed at another word on its ownsome “. . these are places. Spithead and Portsmouth. Then under each are the boats and each name has a note or two. Like here-says Pegasus, six months provisioned, ready for sea, and here says Repulse 64 will be ready in fourteen days.”

Jocasta frowned. “What’s the sixty-four?”

“Number of guns on the boat, I think, Mrs. Bligh. And on it goes-both these pages are covered with names like that. Here’s one arrived from Ireland, here’s another they say on a cruise.”

“What’s that then?”

Ripley shrugged and turned the paper back to her. “When they go out and find another fella’s boat and take the stuff on it. Or so I think. Naval types all go to Maisie’s chophouse farther up the Strand when they’re about. Her husband was in the service till he died of it, see. So I don’t hear a lot of naval talk.”

“Fred comes here, mind,” Jocasta said, as she folded up the paper and put it back in her pocket.

Ripley sat back and stretched his arms. “That’s clerks not sailors. We get a fair few of them, all inky and thin and gnawing on the bones past where your dog’d leave them.”

“You did us a good turn with that Fred last night, Ripley.”

“Always glad to do you a favor, Mrs. Bligh. Not that it was much of a trial. He was in here with two others and they were glowing before they sat down.” He curled his lip. “All mighty pleased with themselves and trying to grab Sally’s arse, though his wife’s only been in her grave a day. I’d call him a dog but that would be an insult to your Boyo.”

“He turned mournful by time he got home.”

“Sally got sick of it and gave him a slap and an earful. He was so pissed by then he turned from up to down like a hoop.”

They paused, both examining the grain on the rough table between them. Ripley spoke up again first.

“Were there lots of papers like that, Mrs. Bligh?”

“Aye. Plenty.”

Ripley scratched slowly at the back of his neck. “It’s treason, isn’t it? They don’t just hang you for that. If that list was meant for the French or Americans, that’s cause to cut a man’s guts out while he’s still breathing. Legal. Have an eye to it. I heard about Finn and Clayton.”

Jocasta stood heavily and beckoned Sam over. “You’re getting awful wise as you grow, Ripley, ain’t you?”

He folded his arms. “Don’t have no choice in the matter, Mrs. Bligh. Anyways, I’m saying you need a sailor, one you can trust, and a high-up.”

“I know. And higher than I can reach so we’d better find a way to climb.”