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  Nowhere Man (John Pickett Mysteries, #10.5)

  NOWHERE MAN | Another John Pickett Novella | Sheri Cobb South

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  THE JOHN PICKETT MYSTERIES

  PICKPOCKET’S APPRENTICE

  (A John Pickett novella)

  IN MILADY’S CHAMBER

  A DEAD BORE

  FAMILY PLOT

  DINNER MOST DEADLY

  WAITING GAME

  (Another John Pickett novella)

  TOO HOT TO HANDEL

  FOR DEADER OR WORSE

  MYSTERY LOVES COMPANY

  PERIL BY POST

  INTO THIN EIRE

  BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A CRIME?

  NOWHERE MAN

  (Another John Pickett novella)

  NOWHERE MAN

  Another John Pickett Novella

  Sheri Cobb South

  NOWHERE MAN

  © 2020 by Sheri Cobb South. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  1

  Which Finds John Pickett Nursing a Secret

  “I suppose I’d best be getting back to work.”

  With this unenthusiastic pronouncement, John Pickett, formerly of Bow Street, set aside his tea cup and rose to his feet. He crossed the hall and reclaimed the knitted muffler he’d surrendered to the butler upon stopping in Curzon Street to partake of a light nuncheon with his wife and his ten-year-old half-brother. It was only mid-October, but already the wind was keen and the skies heavy, hinting at the coming winter.

  Julia rose as readily as her pregnancy (now in its seventh month) would allow, leaving young Kit in sole possession of the tray of fairy cakes—a tray which would very likely be empty when she returned from accompanying her husband to the door. “Poor love! Are you not making much progress on this case, then?”

  “What makes you say so?” he asked, a bit more sharply than the question warranted.

  The faint note of defensiveness in his tone was enough to make her blink at him in surprise. “Why, only that you don’t talk about it much.”

  “You have enough on your mind,” he said with a vague gesture toward the drawing room and the pile of small linen shirts he’d interrupted her in the act of mending.

  “On the contrary, I don’t have nearly enough! If it weren’t for Kit tearing through his clothes at an astounding pace, I should very likely be bored to distraction. In all seriousness, John, if there is anything I can do to help—”

  “Thank you, sweetheart, but no.” He summoned a feeble smile. “I’m afraid any investigation is nine parts tedium, really.”

  “In that case, I shall see you this evening,” she said, accepting this dismissal with a good grace. “Cook is preparing veal cutlets, so don’t be late.”

  “I shan’t be—but it won’t be veal cutlets that I’ll be hurrying home for,” he said, drawing her as close as the bulge of her abdomen would allow.

  He kissed her lingeringly, then waited until she had closed the door behind him before setting out on foot for nowhere in particular. Much as he loved Julia—and he loved her very, very much indeed—it was something of a relief to leave her, and to drop the pretense of being busy working on an investigation. Of being busy doing anything, for that matter, ever since he had left Bow Street under a cloud of suspicion, even though Mr. Colquhoun, his magistrate—his former magistrate, rather—insisted there was no such thing.

  It was funny, in a way. He’d never had any illusions about his good name.

  Never, that is, until he’d been faced with the prospect of losing it.

  When Mr. Colquhoun had suggested that he might take on private commissions for those persons of his wife’s class who might balk at flinging open the family closets and subjecting their skeletons to Bow Street’s inspection, he had not been optimistic, and yet it had seemed as good an idea as any other; after all, he could hardly support his aristocratic bride by returning to his old profession of hauling coal, and still less could he go back to picking pockets in Covent Garden. Unfortunately, the well-heeled, scandal-averse individuals who were to have provided his livelihood had failed to materialize.

  And so, less than a year after he had chided Julia for withholding information from him during the Sir Reginald Montague affair, he had deliberately lied to her. Granted, it had never been his intention to deceive her, but when she’d asked about his frequent absences from home, he had fobbed her off with so feeble an explanation that she had been quite certain he must be investigating a matter of great delicacy. Rather than disabuse her of this pleasant notion, he’d created such a case from whole cloth.

  Worst of all, if he were forced to make the decision again, he was not at all certain he would not have done the same thing. She had seized upon Mr. Colquhoun’s suggestion with such eagerness that he couldn’t bear to disappoint her by telling her the scheme she’d embraced so enthusiastically was a failure.

  No, not the scheme. It was not the magistrate’s suggestion that had failed; it was he himself.

  And he, coward that he was, could not bring himself to admit his failure to Julia. Not that she would utter a word of reproach. On the contrary, she would remain steadfastly loyal, would even make excuses for his lack of progress.

  But he didn’t want excuses, and he certainly didn’t want her to feel compelled to offer them. No, he wanted accomplishments, the sort of accomplishments that would make her former friends and acquaintances admit that perhaps Lady Fieldhurst had not done so very badly in her second marriage after all. God knew her loyalty and her love deserved some reward—namely, a worthier object.

  Unfortunately, it appeared she was unlikely to have it. He had toyed once before with the idea of releasing her from an unequal marriage by putting a period to his own existence, but he’d discovered he had not possessed the courage to put such a plan into action. Ironically, that same scheme would be the act of a coward now, given that he’d placed upon her shoulders the dual burdens of a child on the way and a ten-year-old boy.

  Finding that his steps had led him to the piazza at Covent Garden, he leaned against one of the pillars supporting the portico of St. Paul’s Church and looked out over the bustling fruit and vegetable market, recalling a time not so very long ago when he’d stood in this same spot, searching for a young woman who sold cabbages. That young woman was dead now, murdered by her felonious lover in retaliation for her leading Bow Street—in the form of Pickett himself—practically to their doorstep. Nor had she been the first woman to die in the course of his investigations, for there had been another only a few months earlier in the Lake District. Really, he thought, much struck, he seemed to have a singularly deleterious effect on the female of the species. Perhaps it was a good thing he’d left Bow Street, after all. No, he amended, following this line of reasoning to its inevitable conclusion, perhaps it would have been better if he’d never been born in the first place.

  But it was too late for that—twenty-five years too late—and so, in the absence of any better option, it remained only for him to find some way of passing the time until he could return to Curzon Street without arousing his wife’s suspicions. The first few days he had spent thus engaged, he had entertained hopes of stumbling upon some crime in progress—a remnant of his early days with the Bow Street Foot Patrol, no doubt—which he could ta
ke a hand in stopping, and for which he might perhaps earn some reward, preferably in the form of pounds sterling. As one uneventful day succeeded another, he’d lowered his sights from persons to pets: finding a lost dog, or else rescuing a cat who’d got itself stuck in a tree. Finally, his ambitions had become even more modest, to the point that he only wanted somewhere to loiter without attracting the notice of his former colleagues.

  Gradually he became aware that one of the costermongers was trying to catch his eye—a short, plump woman with cheeks as round and rosy as the apples she offered for sale. He answered her gap-toothed grin with a rather forced smile, then pushed his shoulders away from the pillar and made his way to the place where she’d set up shop. He selected one of the apples, and paid the woman twice the price she asked—a recklessly extravagant gesture for a man out of work, to be sure, but an oft-repeated one, carried out in the vague hope that it might somehow atone for the theft of another apple fully a decade earlier. Alas, it never did. Instead, the gratitude expressed by the recipient only made Pickett feel worse, knowing that it was wholly undeserved.

  And so it proved once again.

  “God bless you, sir,” the apple seller said warmly, squirreling the coins away in her bodice as if fearful he might change his mind and demand the return of one. “God bless you for your kind heart.”

  “It’s nothing, really—” he demurred, but it appeared she wasn’t finished yet.

  “And you mustn’t think such a thing. You’re quite wrong, you know.”

  “It’s only tuppence. I assure you, I can well afford it,” he added with a humorless little laugh. It was true, for what it was worth. Money was not a problem, thanks to Julia’s jointure from her first marriage. He had finally come to uneasy terms with the fact that he would never be able to provide for her as well as her first husband had done, but to bring nothing at all to the marriage, not even the pitiful twenty-five shillings a week that had constituted his Bow Street wages, was quite another matter, especially now that she was expected to feed, clothe, and educate his young half-brother in addition to their own child.

  “Pshaw! I’m not talking about money! I’m talking about your not having been born.”

  “I—I beg your pardon?” He had indeed been indulging in just such a maudlin train of thought, but he was fairly certain he had not spoken the idea aloud, and certainly not at sufficient volume that it could have been discerned over the din of commerce, and at such a distance.

  “It wouldn’t have been better at all,” she continued, carefully rearranging the apples on top of her basket in order to fill in the gap left by his purchase.

  “I—I’m sorry—I don’t quite—”

  “Of course you do! I heard you. And I tell you, you’re quite wrong.”

  “But—how—”

  The question he struggled to frame was to remain unasked, however, for at that moment a disturbing sight drove the curious exchange from his mind.

  Amidst the wagons and carts choking the street, a single horse picked its way through the pedestrians thronging about the open market, clip-clopping slowly but steadily in his direction—a horse whose rider wore the blue coat and red waistcoat of the Bow Street Horse Patrol. The man’s black hat was pulled down to offer its wearer protection against the sharp wind. Pickett, however, didn’t have to see the fellow’s face to recognize Harry Carson.

  The prospect of being seen like this, alone and unemployed, by one whom he had once outranked in the Bow Street hierarchy, was intolerable. He stuffed the apple into his pocket, then drew himself up to his full height and strode purposefully away from the market.

  Right into the path of a drayman’s wagon.

  Chaos ensued. A woman screamed and the drayman sawed at the reins, cursing fluently as he struggled to avoid running Pickett down while simultaneously maintaining control over his startled team. He might have eventually succeeded in this endeavor had the apple seller not felt it incumbent upon her to offer some assistance. She hurried into the fray, knocking over in her haste a tall basket of oranges offered for sale by a fellow costermonger, who had no intention of allowing such blatant contempt for her own wares to go unchallenged. As the ensuing quarrel escalated quickly from what is euphemistically called “exchanging pleasantries” to pulling first caps and then hair, the horses took exception to the orange globes rolling and bouncing underfoot.

  Pickett, seeing that becoming embroiled in such a mêlée was hardly the best way in which to avoid the notice of even so oblivious an investigator as Harry Carson, judged it time to beat a strategic retreat. He might have been successful in this endeavor, had he not stepped on one of the oranges so plaguing the horses. It rolled out from under him, taking his foot with it. Pickett grasped wildly for the nearest support, and succeeded only in pulling a tall basket of cabbages down upon himself as he fell. Then his head struck the pavement, and Pickett knew no more.

  2

  In Which John Pickett Receives a Shock

  “Get back, now, and give him some air! He’s coming ’round.”

  Pickett recognized the voice, and groaned aloud. Somehow it seemed of a piece with all the rest, that the first voice he should hear, in the wake of an accident as humiliating as it was painful, would be Harry Carson’s.

  “Are you all right, old fellow?”

  There was no trace of mockery in the question, and Pickett opened his eyes. He was stretched out full-length in the middle of the market, his throbbing head cushioned by the knitted muffler—a gift from Mrs. Colquhoun the previous Christmas—which someone had removed from about his neck in order to fold into a makeshift pillow. A circle of curious onlookers surrounded him, a circle that included the drayman, now looking somewhat abashed, and the woman with the basket of oranges; of her rival in the same profession, the apple seller who had so disconcerted him, there was no sign. Rather nearer at hand, his former colleague knelt beside him, regarding him with every appearance of concern in his blue eyes.

  “I say, are you all right?” Carson asked again. “Is there anyone I should send for?”

  “You’re not to go worrying Julia with this, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Pickett said firmly. At least, he’d intended to speak firmly; instead, his voice was shaky and weak.

  “Julia?” Carson seized upon the name. “Your wife, perhaps?”

  “Yes, my wife,” Pickett said with some asperity as he cautiously raised himself to a sitting position. “You’ve met Julia—Mrs. Pickett—before.”

  “Your name is Pickett, then?”

  “Cut line, Harry. You know full well—”

  “You know who I am?” Carson sounded not only surprised, but gratified by the fact.

  “Of course I know who you are! I assure you, there’s nothing wrong with my memory—nothing wrong with me at all that rest and willow bark tea won’t set to rights,” he added, putting a hand to his throbbing head. “But I’ve known you for months. We investigated that business at Dunbury together.”

  At this reminder, Carson’s look of surprised pleasure faded. “Er, maybe you’d better come with me. You can wait in comfort at the Bow Street Public Office while someone sends for your wife—Julia Pickett, you said?—to come and fetch you.”

  “Bow Street?” Pickett recoiled as if Carson had suggested they seek out a comfortable snake pit or lion’s den. “No! I don’t want—that is, I wouldn’t like to impose on Mr. Colquhoun—”

  “Believe me, Mr. Colquhoun won’t be overly troubled,” Carson drawled.

  Under different circumstances, Pickett might have pressed him to explain this cryptic remark. But Carson’s whole demeanor toward him was so odd that Pickett doubted that his explanation would be any more enlightening than the rest of his conversation had been.

  “Thank you, Harry, but there’s no need for you to go to any trouble. I’m perfectly capable of going home on my own.”

  In proof of this statement, he clambered to his feet and dusted himself off. The circle of spectators had begun to disperse, see
ing the show was over, and so Pickett had no difficulty in walking past them, although he was not so steady on his pins as he would have liked.

  A long walk in the brisk air went some way toward restoring him, and by the time he reached Curzon Street, Pickett felt much himself again. It was a great pity that he could not say the same for everyone else. As he approached the tall, narrow house where he lived with his wife, he saw a few of the neighbors out and about in spite of the autumnal chill in the air, although not so many as there would have been in months past, when the weather was warmer and the days longer. It was not the number of people that puzzled him, however, but their behavior. To be sure, the general attitude toward him had never been warm; his birth was too far beneath theirs to permit of approval, much less friendship. But on this occasion, they seemed not to notice him at all. Even the few with whom he exchanged nods returned the gesture not with the frigid civility he had come to expect, but with the distant courtesy one might accord a stranger. Shaking off a vague feeling of disquiet, he strode up the broad, shallow steps of number twenty-two, and opened the door.

  Or he tried to. Finding it locked, he was obliged to resort to the brass knocker mounted in the middle of the door just below eye level. It opened a moment later, and Pickett found himself staring into the face of a total stranger.

  “Where is Rogers?” he asked, blinking in confusion at the individual who was most certainly not Julia’s butler, whom he had inherited, along with all her worldly goods, when he’d married her. This man, though clad in the sober dark suit of the London butler, could give Rogers ten years or more, and had the wrinkles to prove it. Or perhaps the wrinkles creasing his forehead were merely part of the bewilderment writ large upon his face.

  “Who, sir?”

  “Rogers,” echoed Pickett. “My butler.”

  “One would suppose, sir, that your butler would be at your house.”

  “But—but this is my house,” Pickett insisted.