Nowhere Man Read online

  “—And here you show up all tricked out in your fine new clothes, when there’s my floor upstairs all torn out”—Whack!—“and Lord Lessing what owns this building demanding that I pay for the repairs from my own pocket—” Whack!

  Pickett flung up one arm in a futile attempt to stave off the attack long enough to make the woman see reason. “Mrs. Catchpole, that wasn’t—I wouldn’t—”

  “—Besides giving him back a buried treasure that I don’t have and never did”—Whack!—“and saying he’ll see me ruined if I don’t hand it over—”

  Pickett, deciding discretion was indeed the better part of valor, abandoned all attempts at self-defense, and took to his heels. He fled the shop with his irate landlady and her broom in hot pursuit. Once outside, he collapsed against the door while he contemplated this fresh disaster. Mrs. Catchpole, ruined? Why, she was the canniest businesswoman he’d ever known, deriving a modest but steady living for more than twenty years after the death of her husband had forced her to run the shop on her own. What had happened here? He had been obliged to return the treasure to Lord Lessing—although it had gone sorely against the grain with him to do so, it had belonged to the man by law—but not before coercing his lordship into granting Mrs. Catchpole the use of the property rent-free for the rest of her life. It seemed Lord Lessing had gone back on his word.

  But no, Pickett recalled, his thinking growing clearer as his heavy breathing returned to normal, she had said the floor of the upstairs flat was completely ripped out. He had taken up only the one board, and he’d put it back in place after removing the cache of silver that had been concealed in the cavity beneath. If, as the apple woman claimed, he had never been born, then it appeared someone else had discovered the treasure—someone who had been so hopeful of discovering more that he’d all but destroyed the flat in the process. And then what? The fellow had decamped, apparently, in the middle of the night, saying nothing to Mrs. Catchpole of his discovery nor even paying the rent he owed...

  If she thought him capable of such a betrayal, it was no wonder she’d beaten him about the head with a broom. He’d be tempted to beat such a fellow himself.

  One thing was certain: He could not look to Mrs. Catchpole for lodgings, even if the flat were still habitable. Where else, then, might he turn? He cast his mind back still further, to the days before he had taken up residence under Mrs. Catchpole’s roof. He’d spent five years working for a coal merchant, and although the work was grueling and dirty, it had come with a tiny bedchamber in the basement of Mr. Granger’s house and a place at his servants’ board. Pickett had seen Elias Granger only once in the years since then, but his old employer had seemed pleased at his visit. Granted, there was quite a difference between giving a former apprentice tea and agreeing to house him for the night; still, the hour was growing late, and Pickett’s options were shrinking. And so he turned his steps toward Cecil Street and, upon reaching the collier’s house, knocked wearily on the door.

  As soon as the butler opened it, Pickett knew something was wrong, although he could not have said how he knew. To be sure, his first impression was one of prosperity: The interior of the house smelled of sawdust and fresh paint, and beyond the foyer, he could see glimpses of paint-spattered sheets swathing the drawing room furnishings. Nearer at hand, the crystal prisms of what appeared to be a large chandelier lay in a sparkling heap on the floor, partially protected by the tall wooden stepladder which had been positioned over it, and which would, presumably, soon be employed by the builder who would affix it to the ceiling. It appeared that some sort of improvements to the house were being made, but this, surely must be a good thing—mustn’t it?

  “Yes, sir?” prompted the butler, awaiting some indication as to the reason for the visitor’s presence. The man did not seem to recognize him, but Pickett decided to let this slight pass; Mr. Granger’s servants had been singularly unimpressed with the young thief whom their employer had taken on as a favor to an old friend, so it was quite possible that the butler was feigning ignorance out of spite.

  “Oh, er, I beg your pardon. I should like to see Mr. Granger, if it isn’t too late.” As he recalled, the coal merchant still kept the early hours he had established in his younger days, when he had first begun to amass his fortune.

  “I’m afraid it is, sir. About seven years too late, in fact.”

  “Oh?” Pickett asked warily, feeling once again the now-familiar prickling at the back of his neck.

  “Mr. Granger died seven years ago.”

  “But—but that’s impossible! I don’t believe it!” In fact, Pickett had good reason for his skepticism, having seen and spoken to the supposedly deceased Mr. Granger a scant six months earlier.

  The butler shrugged. “You may believe or not, it’s nothing to me. Your disbelief won’t make it any less true, however.” Finding the caller at a loss, the butler took pity on him. “Mrs. Lumpkin is here, if you should wish to see her instead.”

  “Mrs.—Lumpkin, you say?” echoed Pickett, taken aback by the introduction into the conversation of a name he’d never heard in his life.

  “Mr. Granger’s married daughter. Miss Sophy, as was.”

  “Sophy—you mean Lady Gerald Broadbridge, surely?”

  The butler’s brow puckered. “I’m not quite sure how you should know about that—not many people do, out-side the families themselves. It’s true that there was once some talk of a match between Miss Sophy and Lord Gerald, but all that came to an end when it was discovered that”—his voice lowered to a discreet whisper—“that Miss Sophy was in the family way.”

  “Oh?” Pickett, under no illusion as to the “honor” upon which the upper classes placed so much emphasis, thought the younger son of a duke would have no scruples about debauching a not-entirely-innocent daughter of the rising industrial class, much less one who had no doubt been an eager participant in her own debauchment. Still, he would not have thought Lord Gerald would let Sophy’s dowry slip through his hands so easily. “And having had his way with her, Lord Gerald drew back from the betrothal?”

  “There’s the thing.” By this time, the butler had apparently determined that Pickett, in spite of his ignorance of its patriarch’s passing, was sufficiently intimate with the family that he might speak freely. “It wasn’t Lord Gerald who had, er, done the deed. That honor, it seems, belonged to the footman.”

  “I see,” Pickett said, remembering the many times Sophy had kept his own youthful ardor in line by threatening to favor the footman with her attentions. It seemed she had made good on the threat. Unless... “Tell me,” Pickett began thoughtfully, “do you recall an apprentice who came to live here? It would have been about ten years ago. His name was John.” His voice shook a bit on the final word. It felt strange to speak of himself as if he were someone else. It felt stranger still to speak of himself as if he no longer existed. Or, perhaps, as if he never had.

  “I’m afraid you must be mistaken,” the butler said, shaking his head. “Mr. Granger would never have allowed an apprentice to live under his own roof, for fear the lad might have designs on Miss Sophy.”

  “He did,” Pickett muttered under his breath. “Poor fool.”

  The butler’s brow puckered. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Never mind. But—Mrs. Lumpkin, you said?”

  “Yes, for she married the footman. Quite a step down from Lord Gerald Broadbridge, but what else was poor Mr. Granger to do but insist the blackguard make an honest woman of her? The shame of it killed him, though. The doctor called it a heart attack. A broken heart, more like.” He shot a disapproving glance over his shoulder at the detritus of the construction trade. “And perhaps it’s just as well he didn’t live to see Miss Sophy and young Dick—I beg your pardon, I should say Mr. Lumpkin, seeing as he’s now the master—as I say, the pair of them letting the fortune poor Mr. Granger amassed by the sweat of his brow run through their hands like water, and neither of them having any more thought for the business than their boy has, for a
ll he’s only six years old.”

  Pickett made a sympathetic noise that was not entirely feigned, and the butler was recalled to his duty. “But I mustn’t keep you standing here. Did you want to see Mrs. Lumpkin, sir?”

  Did he want to see Sophy? Granted, he had not enjoyed his last encounter with her, but while on that occasion she had been not at all pleased to discover that he had not worn the willow for her all these years, but had married another (and married a viscountess, at that), it was quite possible that this time she would not recognize him; after all, no one else had. One could hardly beg a room for the night from a seeming stranger—and the possibility that Sophy would be resolved not to remain strangers for long did nothing to reconcile him to the prospect.

  “No, thank you,” he told the butler. “I won’t trouble Miss Granger—that is, Mrs. Lumpkin. Good night.”

  With this avenue closed, there was only one thing he could do. He would find Mr. Colquhoun, and even if the magistrate did not remember him, well, Mr. Colquhoun’s kindness would not allow him to cast a man in need out into the street. At least, not the Mr. Colquhoun I know, Pickett told himself as he set out in search of the magistrate, more than half afraid of what he would find.

  The hour was late enough that the magistrate should have long since left the Bow Street Public Office, but as Pickett’s present location was nearer to Bow Street than it was to Mr. Colquhoun’s residence in Mayfair, he decided to stop there first, just in case the magistrate had stayed late.

  But as he reached Russel Street, it seemed to Pickett that something was out of place—or, more accurately, that something was back in place, something that had, at least in the London he knew, been absent for almost a year.

  Distracted momentarily from his search for Mr. Colquhoun, Pickett followed Russel Street to its intersection with Brydges Street, and his misgivings were confirmed: There on the corner stood the massive edifice that was Drury Lane Theatre. Evidently no performance was taking place that night, for the enormous building stood silent and tranquil in the darkness.

  There was only one thing about the peaceful scene to give him pause.

  The Theatre Royal at Drury Lane had burned to the ground eight months ago.

  6

  In Which John Pickett

  Is Reunited with His Magistrate

  On second thought, Pickett amended as he walked slowly toward the building that shouldn’t have been there, not just one, but two things were wrong. For as he approached the theatre, he could see a printed placard in the circle of yellow light cast by a lamp on the street corner, a placard affixed to the front of the building announcing the appearance of Mrs. Elizabeth Church in the current production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which would run until 15 January.

  The last time he had seen Elizabeth Church—more familiarly known as Elspeth Kirkbride—she had abandoned the stage and was planning her wedding. Betrothals, he knew, might be broken, but how could one explain the sudden resurrection of a building that had burned to the ground—a building that, when he had last seen it only a few days ago, had just begun the long, slow process of rising from its own ashes?

  Dismissing this new puzzle, at least for the moment, he hurried away in the direction of Bow Street. Whatever the changes that Harry Carson had hinted at, he would ask Mr. Colquhoun to put him up for the night; perhaps when he awoke in the morning, he would be able to make some sense of the strange new world in which he found himself.

  Better yet, perhaps when he awoke in the morning, he would find himself in his own bed back in Curzon Street with Julia lying beside him, regarding him with a puzzled expression and wanting to know what in the world he had been dreaming, that had caused him to mutter and moan in his sleep all night long.

  Having by this time reached the Bow Street Public Office, he entered the familiar building and looked about him. Besides the usual assortment of petty criminals and prostitutes, there were a few members of the Night Patrol, as well as a couple of his former colleagues, those principal officers colloquially known as Runners. Mr. Dixon was just putting on his greatcoat, and Mr. Griffin was in conversation with a constable who had brought in a juvenile miscreant, whom he now held by the collar of the boy’s threadbare coat. Both men looked up briefly at his entrance before returning their attention to their previous activities. Either they had not forgiven him for his rôle in that business with the Bank of England, or else they did not recognize him at all. Pickett wasn’t sure which prospect he found the most disturbing.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Dixon,” he said, approaching the senior Runner, “is Mr. Colquhoun still here?”

  The older man’s eyes narrowed. “Who wants to know?”

  “John Pickett,” he said impatiently. “Surely you must remember me. I used to—”

  He broke off abruptly. The door to Mr. Colquhoun’s office had just opened, and a third Runner emerged from the small chamber—a man in his mid-thirties, with straw-colored hair and a beaklike nose.

  “Foote?” Pickett asked incredulously. “William Foote?”

  “Aye.” Cold blue eyes flicked over Pickett without recognition before turning to Dixon.

  It appeared he could expect no help from his former colleagues. Not that Foote had any right to hold a grudge against any other Runner, Pickett thought in growing indignation; after all, Foote was supposed to be dead, having been shot by Mr. Colquhoun after burning down Drury Lane Theatre in an attempt to murder Pickett himself.

  “No luck,” Foote told Dixon, shaking his head. “He’s determined to go.”

  Dixon muttered a curse under his breath. “I don’t like turning him out into the street like this. I’d go with him, if I knew where he lived. Would he tell me, do you think?”

  “He might,” Foote conceded with a shrug. “Whether you could make any sense of it is another matter.”

  “You’re talking about Mr. Colquhoun?” Pickett asked urgently. Receiving an answer in the affirmative, he pressed for more. “Is he ill?”

  Foote gave a short bark of laughter. “You could put it that way. Not the word I’d choose, myself.”

  Ignoring this rider, Pickett strode to the door of the magistrate’s office and stepped inside. “Mr. Colquhoun? Are you all right, sir? Sir!”

  Mr. Colquhoun was standing at the coat tree, swaying on his feet as he struggled to untangle a knitted muffler from one of its hooks, but he turned at the sound of his own name, and Pickett’s heart stood still in his chest. The magistrate’s thick white hair stuck out from his head in all directions, as if he had just that moment been awakened from sleep. His eyelids drooped over bloodshot blue eyes, and his nose was swollen and red, laced with a latticework of broken blood vessels. In short, Mr. Colquhoun was drunk, and by all appearances his condition was not an infrequent one.

  Pickett was well aware that the magistrate liked his whisky as much as any other Scotsman, but he had never known Mr. Colquhoun to drink to excess, and certainly not while he sat at the bench. As he watched in stunned disbelief, Mr. Colquhoun turned back to his struggle with the muffler.

  “Damned thing—won’t—” muttered the magistrate, punctuating the last word with a mighty tug that would have upset his balance and pulled the coat tree down on top of him, had Pickett not intervened.

  “Here, sir, let me help.” He steadied Mr. Colquhoun with one hand and the coat tree with the other and, once neither was in imminent danger of collapse, began disentangling the muffler from its hook. “Are you ready to go home, then? I’m heading that way myself. Why don’t I accompany you?”

  Actually, Pickett wasn’t heading anywhere, at least not that he could tell. Still, he could hardly leave Mr. Colquhoun to make his own way home in his present condition, not when the man had stood as a surrogate father to him for the last ten years and more. He draped the muffler about the magistrate’s neck, then removed the greatcoat from its hook and held it open.

  “Much obliged t’you.” Mr. Colquhoun peered over his shoulder at the young man helping him on with his co
at. “Who are you?”

  Somehow those three little words hurt more than anything else he had experienced thus far today. “I’m—I’m no one in particular,” Pickett said with perfect truth. “Just—a friend.”

  Having succeeded in easing the magistrate’s arms into his coat sleeves (or, rather, easing the coat sleeves over the magistrate’s arms, as Mr. Colquhoun displayed a tendency to miss his target), Pickett buttoned him up and set his hat firmly on his head. After assuring himself that the magistrate would not topple over without his support, Pickett stepped over to the desk and pinched out the flame of the candle that burned there, then took Mr. Colquhoun’s arm and, after some difficulty, maneuvered him out the door.

  “I’ll take him home,” he told Dixon and Foote, steering the magistrate past them. “I know where he lives.”

  “Who are you?” Dixon asked, frowning slightly.

  “An old friend.” Pickett didn’t even try to remind them of the years he’d spent at Bow Street, first as a member of the Foot Patrol and then as a Runner. What would be the point? “I’ll see that he gets safely home.”

  One of us might as well, he thought bleakly as they left the warmth of the Bow Street Public Office for the cold, dark street.

  “Shall I summon a hackney for you, sir?” Pickett offered as they reached Long Acre, looking westward in the hopes of spying just such a vehicle. Alas, he found none, nor was the short segment of Long Acre from Bow Street to Drury Lane any more promising. Fortunately, Mr. Colquhoun did not seem to mind.

  “Always walk,” he declared, and the fisted hand that smote his chest gave Pickett to understand that this was the magistrate’s boast regarding himself, rather than a command to Pickett. “ ’s good for the con-sti-tu-tion,” he added, pronouncing the final word with painstaking precision.

  “It is,” Pickett agreed, although privately he felt he’d had quite enough of walking for one day, having crisscrossed London on foot three times already. “Perhaps the night air will, er, clear your head a bit, too,” he added diplomatically.