Nowhere Man Read online

  Unfortunately, Pickett saw no sign of this hoped-for event. Twice he was obliged to steer the magistrate in the right direction when he would have taken a wrong turn, and once he only just succeeded in holding his mentor back when he would have stepped out in front of a closed carriage drawn by high-spirited bays. At one point Mr. Colquhoun began to sing a tune in Gaelic, even seeming disappointed when Pickett neglected to join him in this musical endeavor.

  “You’re not singing,” he chided, giving Pickett a rather bloodshot version of the fierce scowl he knew from long experience.

  “Er, no, sir,” Pickett said apologetically. “I’m afraid I don’t know the language.”

  “Damned Sassenach,” grumbled Mr. Colquhoun, and took up his song again.

  A lump formed in Pickett’s throat. It wasn’t the first time Mr. Colquhoun had referred to him by the term, and he knew it was no compliment. Still, it had become something of a term of affection in Mr. Colquhoun’s mouth, at least when he, Pickett, was its target. This time, though, it had no meaning beyond the obvious: a Scotsman’s expression of disdain for anyone of English extraction.

  At last they reached the house and stepped up onto the portico, albeit not without difficulty, as Mr. Colquhoun’s foot kept missing the low tread. Pickett knocked on the door, and a moment later it flew open to reveal not the butler, but Mrs. Janet Colquhoun, the magistrate’s wife.

  “There you are, Patrick! I’ve been so worried!” She slipped her shoulder beneath her husband’s arm, shifting the burden of his weight from Pickett to herself with the air of one who had performed the operation many times before; clearly, this was not the first time he had come home in such a condition. “And it so bitter cold tonight, too! Come inside, and we’ll get you warmed up before the fire.”

  The prospect of warming oneself before a fire sounded to Pickett like heaven itself. Alas, any hope he might have entertained that he was included in this invitation was dashed when her attention shifted from her husband to his rescuer. “Thank you for bringing him home. I’m that grateful to you. He’s—he’s always worse this time of year.”

  “It was no trouble at all,” Pickett assured her, and if this was not entirely true, then it was a lie uttered with the best of intentions. “I’m glad to be able to help him, after all he’s done for—but you say he’s worse this time of year? Why? If you’ll forgive me for asking,” he added hastily.

  “It’s our son,” she said, lowering her voice as if this could prevent her husband from hearing. And so it might, Pickett conceded, for the magistrate had begun singing again.

  “That would be James,” Pickett recalled, thinking of the man several years older than himself whom he had met the previous Christmas.

  She shook her head. “No, I meant our second son, Adam. He was the most like his father of all our children. But Adam died while he was still a wee lad, and my poor husband never recovered from the loss.”

  “I’m sorry,” Pickett said, remembering the large and lively family with whom he had spent the previous Christmas. He hadn’t realized they had also known their share of heartache.

  “It’s many years ago now, but at certain times of the year—the lad’s birthday, and the anniversary of the day he died—my husband seeks consolation in drink. But he’s a good man for all that, and I hope you’ll not think the worse of him for his weakness, Mr.—?”

  “Pickett. John Pickett.” He was no longer surprised by the fact that once again someone who should have known him apparently did not.

  Mrs. Colquhoun sighed. “I’ve often thought it was a pity we never had another child after that. Not that it would have replaced our Adam—I’m sure nothing could do that—but another son might have given his thoughts a happier direction. I’d hoped it would get better with the passing of time, but it’s actually grown worse. He didn’t begin drinking so heavily until our children were grown up and on their own, and the house was so empty and quiet.”

  Pickett hardly heard the end of this speech, for he was still considering the implications of its beginning. Another son, she’d said... Sadly, her grieving husband had fathered no more sons of his own. And yet, incredibly, Mr. Colquhoun—the Mr. Colquhoun Pickett remembered—had found an object for his frustrated paternal instincts in a skinny street urchin with a black eye and a broken nose.

  “But I must not keep you, for you’ll be wanting to seek your own bed on such a cold night as this,” Mrs. Colquhoun said, turning her husband toward the stairs with the ease of long practice. “Thank you again for bringing him home, and may God bless you for your kindness.”

  “Mrs. Colquhoun, may I—” The words came out in a rush before Pickett regained control of his tongue. He could not beg her to house him for the night when she believed him to be a stranger, especially not when she had all she could handle just keeping her husband upright. “May I help you get him up the stairs?”

  She turned back just long enough to shake her head. “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Pickett, but I’ll not inconvenience you any further. Thank you again, and good night.”

  And with that, Pickett was gently but firmly dismissed.

  7

  In Which John Pickett

  Returns to the Old Neighborhood

  At least he could be certain that Mr. Colquhoun would sleep safely in his own bed, Pickett reasoned, which was more than he could say for himself. Too late, he wondered if he should have asked his former magistrate what steps he might take to forcibly evict the stranger from his residence. But no, Mr. Colquhoun had been in no condition to dispense legal advice, even if Pickett had thought to ask for it. Perhaps if he’d gone to Bow Street sooner...

  But he’d been ashamed. Too ashamed to let his former colleagues know that he’d been idle since leaving Bow Street, that his plan to take on private commissions independent of that organization had proven to be an abysmal failure.

  He gave a bitter little laugh. If he’d thought his situation humiliating before, only look at him now, wandering the streets of London with nowhere to go and no one to go home to. Oh, Julia, he thought, wherever you are, I hope you’re having better luck than I am.

  In the absence of both his wife and his mentor, he had no one else to turn to. He had always been a private person, the experiences of childhood having taught him that few people could be trusted—least of all Moll, the nominal “stepmother,” who had ordered him out of the house before his father’s ship, bound for Botany Bay, had even left the harbor. In fact, until Mr. Colquhoun had crossed his path (or, rather, until he had crossed Mr. Colquhoun’s, having been hauled before the magistrate for theft), he could remember only one person who had commanded his respect—although that hadn’t stopped the young Pickett from stealing coins from the man’s desk from time to time. Still, he’d recently done what he could to atone for those old wrongs, and so now he set out across London once more, this time bound for the Butterworth Charity School.

  He was still bewildered by the resurrection of Drury Lane Theatre from its own ashes, but as he reached the slums of Seven Dials, it was clear there had been no such redemption for this benighted section of Town, or for the luckless individuals who had the misfortune to live here. Unlike the deserted streets of Mayfair, there were still some signs of life here, for while the honest citizens of London slept, the city’s criminal element stirred to life, like nocturnal creatures awakening from their daytime slumbers. Across the street, a trio of ragged men loitered in a doorway; Pickett took care not to invite trouble by seeming to challenge them, but kept a close watch out of the corner of his eye nonetheless. Some little distance away, a man lurched drunkenly across the dark, narrow street in answer to the summons of a blowsy woman who called down bawdy invitations from an upper-story window. Nearer at hand, another man lay motionless against the wall, either sick, unconscious, or dead; Pickett, stepping gingerly around this inanimate heap of humanity, wasn’t especially eager to find out which.

  Mr. Butterworth’s school represented a small ray of hope in this bleak
underworld, and it drew Pickett now just as it had a dozen years earlier, when he had briefly been a student there. He was not alarmed to find it dark, or its door locked; the hour was far advanced by this time, and even the most dedicated of schoolmasters would have long since sought his bed. Still, something struck him as ominous, although he could not have said what. Then the moon emerged briefly from the clouds, and he had his answer.

  The words “Butterworth Charity School,” once painted over the door in neat block letters, were now cracked and peeling, and a tattered paper nailed to the door announced that the building was available for lease; the curled edges and faded text suggested it had been untenanted for a considerable time.

  Pickett stepped to the window, cupped his hands about his eyes, and pressed his nose to the glass. The headmaster’s desk was still there, but instead of standing parallel to the wall facing the young scholars, it had been shoved aside at an angle, allowing Pickett to see that two of its drawers hung open. As for the rest of the schoolroom furnishings, the tables and chairs where the pupils had once sat were now tumbled haphazardly about the room. Most of the books had been pulled down from the shelves and some of their pages torn out, presumably to be burned as a free source of fuel on cold nights such as this one. A thick coat of dust shrouded everything, disturbed in places by footprints too large to belong to any youthful scholar. Clearly, it had been a very long time since any classes had been taught here.

  “Looking to lease the place?”

  Interrupted in his survey of the old schoolroom, Pickett turned to discover the night watchman, one of those vestiges of an earlier chapter in the history of English law enforcement, regarding him with thinly veiled suspicion.

  “What? Oh—no—nothing like that. It’s just—I used to go to school here.” He knew his manner was unlikely to allay anyone’s misgivings, but in fact, the man had taken him by surprise; the Charlies were usually content to spend their shifts tucked securely in their watchman’s boxes, warming themselves on cold nights with a hot brick and a bottle of gin—although not necessarily in that order.

  “Is that right?” The watchman’s tone was more indicative of skepticism than curiosity. “Well, no one’s gone to school here in ten years or more, and you look like your school days are long past, so mayhap you’d best be moving along.”

  As Pickett, at five-and-twenty, was obliged to endure a seemingly endless litany of observations about his youth, the fact that the watchman was accusing him instead of being too old was in itself enough to convince him that the entire world had been turned on its head. He hadn’t the luxury of pondering this curious reversal, however, for something the man had said had aroused his curiosity.

  “Ten years, you say?”

  The watchman nodded, and together they left the abandoned school and walked back the way Pickett had come. “Aye, although now that I come to think on it, it’s probably more like a dozen.”

  “Why? Did Mr. Butterworth—is he dead?” Pickett asked, thinking of his former employer, Elias Granger, now deceased.

  “Lud, how should I know? He wasn’t dead when the school closed, if that’s what you’re wanting to know.”

  “I see. Why did he close it, then?”

  “Look about you!” The watchman waved his arm in a sweeping gesture that took in the disreputable neighborhood. “Do any of these folks look like they care much about learning to read, write, and cipher?”

  One of them did, Pickett thought. He had no opportunity to point out this exception, however, for the watchman wasn’t finished yet.

  “No, I’m thinking poor old Mr. Butterworth was just tired of fighting a losing battle. Can’t really blame him, can you?”

  Pickett agreed that he could not, and after failing to ascertain from the watchman any information as to Mr. Butterworth’s present whereabouts, he began to devise a plan. He had only to remain in conversation with the night watchman long enough to convince the man that he was indeed “moving along,” then return and let himself into the schoolroom. He had no illusions that any of the coins Mr. Butterworth had once kept in his desk drawer would still be there—how helpful that would have been!—but at least he could lock himself inside and be assured of a reasonably safe place to sleep and some protection from the elements. Like Harold Bertram, Pickett was persuaded snow was in the air.

  He voiced this prediction to the watchman, and the reliable topic of the weather sustained the conversation while they traversed the length of two full blocks, by which time Pickett judged it safe to part company with his unwelcome companion. He bade the night watchman a cheerful good evening and set off in another direction. Twice he looked back and saw the watchman some distance behind, although the man did not appear to be intentionally following him.

  Not until Pickett looked back a third time and saw no trace of the fellow at all did he deem it safe to return to the old Butterworth Charity School, and even then he did not dare to retrace his steps, but instead turned down a side street that, if memory served, should take him back to Seven Dials. He soon had the satisfaction of discovering that his recollections of this part of London were correct: the narrow lane decanted him into one of the seven streets that were all that remained of the intersection’s namesake, the column with its sundials having been dismantled and removed long before Pickett was born. Along the way, he had the felicity of discovering a short twist of fine metal wire amongst the detritus littering the street. He straightened it as much as possible and, having reached the door of the school, proceeded to put his makeshift tool to good use.

  Positioning himself before the door so as to conceal the movements of his hands, he inserted the wire into the lock. He wished he might squat or kneel, as this would give him a better angle from which to do his work, but he dared make no move that would attract the attention of the vagrants still loitering about the streets. With any luck, they would assume him to be relieving himself against the wall, and allow him to satisfy the demands of Nature in privacy.

  A faint click, more felt than heard, told him he’d accomplished his goal. With a sigh of relief, he withdrew the wire from the lock and pushed the door open.

  In the same instant, a hand seized the collar of his coat. “I knew you was up to no good,” growled the watchman. “Now, you’ll be coming along with me. ‘Used to go to school here,’ my Aunt Fanny! I knows a thief when I sees one!”

  Taken by surprise, Pickett had no time to think. Nor had he any need for conscious thought, for instincts he’d believed to be long-forgotten now reasserted themselves with a vengeance. He yanked his arms from his sleeves and ran, leaving the night watchman holding nothing but an inside-out tailcoat of Bath superfine.

  “Stop! Thief!” Flinging the coat to the ground, the watchman set out in hot pursuit, swinging his wooden rattle to summon bystanders to join in the hue and cry.

  Suddenly Pickett was fourteen years old again, and blind to everything but the need to escape his pursuers. He had no doubt of his ability to outrun old Charlie—the men chosen to fill the position were known for being elderly—but any bystanders would quickly realize that they stood to collect a share of the reward for his capture. And so he ran, up lane and down alley until his aching legs and heaving chest finally forced him to stop, leaning against a grimy brick wall for support as he caught his breath and surveyed his surroundings.

  Just when he’d thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, they had. For now he had no family, no home, no money, no coat—and no idea where he was.

  8

  In Which John Pickett Discovers

  an Old Acquaintance in Dire Straits

  Buck up, old boy, Pickett told himself, stopping to study his surroundings as his heavy breathing and pounding heart slowly returned to normal. It can’t be as bad as all that.

  After all, there had been a time, not so very long ago, when he’d known the back alleys of London like the back of his hand. He had only to walk in any direction long enough, and he would eventually come to some landmark he
recognized.

  Eventually.

  If he didn’t walk straight into the arms of a hungry mob first.

  The only question remaining was deciding which direction to go. The fetid smell of stagnant water suggested that he wasn’t far from one of the inlets formed by either nature or human hands along the banks of the Thames. If he could locate it, he could follow the river westward to more familiar parts of Town. If he could determine which direction was west. Even the direction of the river’s flow wouldn’t necessarily serve as a guide; if the tide was coming in, the water would flow inland, away from the sea.

  “Care for some company?”

  The low, feminine voice sounded a bit too refined for his present surroundings, and held a hint of the Midlands that seemed out of place here in London’s slums. Pickett turned toward the speaker, and found himself confronting a slender, dark-haired young woman whose extremely low-cut gown (to say nothing of the apparent lack of any stays underneath it) left no doubt as to the sort of companionship she offered.

  “Er, no, thank you.” Pickett fixed his eyes firmly on her face, a pale oval in the moonlight, and was assailed with the impression that he had done this same thing with this same young woman before. On that earlier occasion, however, it had not been her exposed bosom that he had been trying not to notice, but her belly, round with child...

  “Miss Braunton?” He stared at her in astonishment. “How did—why—what are you doing here?”

  “I don’t know any Miss Braunton,” she insisted a bit too emphatically. “I’m just Cat. Pussycat, in fact,” she added, and he had no difficulty in recognizing her Christian name, Catherine, beneath the suggestive sobriquet.

  She shivered, and he realized that the arms she kept wrapped around herself (a gesture which he had assumed was intended to push her... assets... into prominence) were in fact her only protection against the cold wind coming off the water. He would have offered her his own coat, but the last time he’d seen that garment, the night watchman was throwing it to the pavement, where it had no doubt been trampled underfoot by every rogue and whore in Seven Dials, unless someone had possessed the forethought to claim it to sell to one of the secondhand clothing shops in Petticoat Lane. Either way, it was lost to him. His waistcoat was the only thing he could offer.