The Mask of Night

I’ve stopped counting the times I’ve watched a comrade die or the hideous variations on the manner of their death. Bloody, bloody war.

Charles Fraser to David Mallinson

5 July, 1813

Billy Simcox slumped forward, the back of his head a mass of blood and gray slime. Miss Simcox screamed. So did half the onlookers. Tables and chairs upended as the gunman tore across the room. Roth cast a quick glance at Miss Dudley, who had her fingers to Billy Simcox’s neck, then spun round and lurched after the fleeing gunman.

The gunman was already at the door to the second room, leaving a trail of splintered furniture, spilled gin, and screaming customers. Roth skidded on the gin-soaked floorboards, bumped his knee on an upturned table, tangled his feet in the skirts of a woman who had fainted. The burly man at the door to the outer room caught his arm as he ran through the doorway. “What the bloody hell—“

“Bow Street business.” Roth wrenched away.

The gunman had jerked open the door to the street. Roth crossed the room in a half dozen strides, bumped into a silk-hatted young man, caught himself against the large barrel and dug a splinter into his palm. He raced through the door to the street only to run full tilt into a woman in a blue pelisse and plumed bonnet. He gripped her arms to steady them both and stumbled over one of the men lying in the street. He and the woman collapsed on the damp cobblestones in a tangle of worn greatcoat and musty blue velvet.

The man they’d fallen over grunted but didn’t open his eyes.

“What do you think you’re doing?” The woman smelled of cheap violet water and teeth ill-cleaned for too many years. Roth pushed himself to his feet and extended his hand. His quarry was long gone. “My apologies, madam. It was a matter of some urgency.”

“Lady slapped your face, is that it?”

“Trying to apprehend a murderer, as it happens.”

The woman gave a grunt of disbelief, swept through the door of the gin shop, and stopped short. Roth pushed past her and strode back to the inner room. This time a path cleared before him. The gin shop owner, a bewhiskered man in a flesh-colored coat, met him half way across the room.

“I’m from Bow Street,” Roth said. “I’ll take charge.”

Suspicion warred with relief in the man’s face. Relief won. He nodded.

Roth found Bet Simcox staring down at her brother’s bloody and very dead body at their table in the inner room. Trenor put his arm round her. She didn’t pull away, but neither did she respond to his touch. Her gaze remained fixed on her brother’s corpse. “Who did this?”

“I’m not sure. The gunman got away.” Roth looked down at the blood soaked dark hair and sticky scalp that were all that was left of Billy Simcox. “He died instantly, Miss Simcox. He wouldn’t have suffered.”

“I should have known. The minute Sam found him the job, I should have—“

“You couldn’t have stopped this, Bet.” Trenor pulled her closer.

“Damn it, Sandy, what do you know about it?” She jerked away from him. “If you hadn’t blundered in here—“

“For what it’s worth,” Roth said, “I don’t think the gunman followed us. The timing isn’t right.”

“Betty,” Trenor said, “you know I’d give—“

“Don’t. Don’t pretend you understand. You and your brothers and sisters’ve had dozens of people to look after you your whole lives.”

“That’s not—“

Her palm connected with his cheek. “Billy was my brother. My younger brother. Nan can barely take care of herself. It was my job to look out for him.”

“Miss Simcox.” Laura Dudley moved to the younger girl’s side. “Forgive me, but I know how easy it is to blame oneself in such a case. How easy and how very misguided.”

Miss Simcox dashed a hand across her eyes. “How can you know—“

Miss Dudley regarded her with eyes haunted by ghosts. “Personal experience. Your brother was a man who made choices. If he loved you half as much as you loved him, he wouldn’t want you to blame yourself.”

Miss Simcox drew a sharp breath. Miss Dudley touched her arm. Roth expected Miss Simcox to pull away, as she had from Trenor, but instead she gave a raw sob and buried her face in Miss Dudley’s shoulder.

Miss Dudley closed her arms round the younger girl and looked at Roth over Miss Simcox’s shoulder. “Do you need Miss Simcox here longer?”

“No. I suggest we all return to Berkeley Square.”

Miss Simcox jerked away. “Billy—“

“I’ll send for an undertaker to take charge of him. You and your sister can make the funeral arrangements later.”

Miss Simcox bent down and pressed her lips to her brother’s forehead. “Did he do it?”

“Who?” Roth asked.

“The man Billy and the other man were working for. Raoul O’Roarke.”

“Charles? Mélanie? We need to talk.” Simon’s voice came through the door to their bedchamber.

‘Come in,’ Charles said.

The conference in the library had broken up a quarter hour since. He and Mélanie had persuaded Simon, O’Roarke, Will, and Hapgood to stay the night on account of the late hour and the potential danger. Having shown their guests to their rooms, they had barely had time to begin to discuss the events of the evening.

Simon paused, just beyond the door, and looked from Charles, standing beside the fireplace, to Mélanie, sitting at her dressing table. “When you thought we were working with St. Juste, you said the plot had something to do with Lord Carfax.”

Charles picked up the poker and stirred the coals. His brain seemed to be moving one step behind the need to come up with explanations.

“For God’s sake.” Simon strode across the room to face him. “I see why you didn’t want to mention whatever it is in front of the others. That’s why I didn’t pursue it until we could be private.”

Charles shook the poker, sending fragments of ash onto the coals. “Because you were afraid they might use information about Carfax for their own political ends?”

“It’s a possibility. God knows he stands against pretty much everything they all believe. I believe.”

Charles returned the poker to its polished brass stand and looked at his friend. Their first meeting, in an Oxford commons with the smell of roast beef and claret in the air and candles flickering on the long tables, was etched firmly in his memory. “Quite.”

“You think I’d use the information against Carfax? We’re talking about David’s father.”

“Difficult to choose between two loyalties,” Charles said. “Carfax has been keeping track of my investigation. Lucinda overheard him talking to an informant. She went to David, and David came to me.’

Simon closed his eyes. ‘That can’t have been easy for David.’

‘Nothing to do with his father has been easy for David for as long as I can remember.’

‘But Carfax asked you to investigate.’

‘Castlereagh would have insisted on it whatever Carfax did. The clever move was for Carfax to insist as well. But Carfax seems to be afraid of what I might discover.’

‘Do you think Carfax hired St. Juste as Will suspects?” Simon’s voice was conversational, but his eyes held the knowledge of what this would mean for David.

‘It doesn’t look that way,’ Charles said. ‘We have reason to think St. Juste was trying to acquire a hold on Carfax.’

‘Acquire a hold how?’

‘He sought out Bel in France last autumn,’ Mélanie said.

‘And— Oh, my God.’

“Simon.” Mélanie sprang to her feet. “Don’t tell me you suspected—”

‘That Bel had a lover?” Simon dropped his hand to grip the mantle. “Nothing so coherent. But the cracks in that marriage have been obvious for a long time.”

“Good God, I don’t know what’s happened to my character reading skills,” Mélanie said.

“You’ve only been round Bel and Oliver constantly for a couple of years,” Simon said. “I’ve seen them day in day out for a decade. Does David know?”

“Bel told him this afternoon,” Charles said. “At first we thought St. Juste had acted on O’Roarke’s orders.”

“And now?”

“Now I confess I’m inclined to believe O’Roarke.”

Simon drew in and released a breath. “You’re right, if nothing else, this makes it unlikely that St. Juste was working for Carfax.”

“I’ve known Carfax to let the ends justify a lot,’ Charles said, ‘but I think even he’d cavil at having a man seduce his daughter.”

“St. Juste could have been working for someone in the Government other than Carfax,” Mélanie said. “I’m sure seducing Bel was an opening gambit in whatever brought St. Juste to London, not the end game.”

Simon’s gaze flickered between her and Charles. “And the game may not have stopped with his death.”

“No,” Charles said. “Though whether the person who had O’Roarke attacked tonight was St. Juste’s killer or employer or someone else entirely remains an open question.”

“I have to go home. I need to see David.”

Charles didn’t attempt to argue with him. In the same circumstances, he’d be desperate to see Mélanie. “Randall can drive you. But for God’s sake be careful. We don’t know if it’s just O’Roarke who was a target or all of you.”

Simon nodded. “I may be reckless, but I have a healthy sense of self-preservation.”

The three of them went downstairs together. “Thank you,” Simon said at the front door. “For trusting me.”

Charles nodded. “It’s nice some things have survived the past twenty-four hours. Don’t let David brood too much.”

“But he will. Every bit as much as you would in the same circumstances,” Simon said with a ghost of his usual grin. He squeezed Charles’s arm, kissed Mélanie’s cheek, and climbed into the waiting barouche.

The long-case clock showed half-past one when Charles and Mélanie returned to the hall, empty now as Michael had been sent to bed long since. He could feel the dull throb of exhaustion behind his eyes as they climbed the stairs to their bedchamber, but he was too restless for sleep. He pushed open the door and looked at his wife.

“Laura isn’t back yet,” she said.

“She’s with Roth. At least I hope to God she still is.”

Mélanie turned to look at him, the weight of all they had learned since they left the Bartletts’ settling between them. “Do you believe him?” she asked.

“Simon?” He closed the door. “I think so.”

“Not Simon.”

He set the lamp he’d been carrying on the Pembroke table. “Do you believe him?”

“Raoul’s probably a better liar than either you or me. But he seemed to be telling the truth.”

Charles turned up the wick, his gaze on the flare of flame within the glass chimney.

‘You don’t agree?’ Mélanie said.

‘No. The devil of it is I’m inclined to believe him as well. And I can’t be sure—’

A rap fell on the door. “It’s me,” said a voice that belonged, inevitably, to Raoul O’Roarke.

Charles opened the door. The man who had fathered him, manipulated his marriage, and saved his life a few scant hours before stood outside, wrapped in a dressing gown Charles recognized as one of his own.

“We need to talk,” O’Roarke said.

“Quite. You’d better come in.”

O’Roarke hesitated a moment, then stepped over the threshold. He moved a little stiffly, perhaps due to his freshly-bandaged wound. “How much do you know beyond what you disclosed in that scene downstairs?” he asked.

“You mean the part about you sending Mélanie to retrieve the Empress Josephine’s paper from St. Juste ten years ago?”

‘Among other things.” O’Roarke looked paler than usual, his face reduced to sharp bones and gaunt hollows.

“Sit down.” Charles gestured to the green velvet armchair by the fireplace.

“Thank you. I know you can give me twenty years, but I’m not entirely decrepit.”

“No,” Charles said, “but you are the most badly injured person present at the moment.

O’Roarke gave a faint smile and sank into the chair. “What else have you discovered?’

Charles regarded him.

“For God’s sake, Charles, we’re on the same side at the moment.”

“That’s the argument I tried on Simon. But the world’s a bit too complicated to talk about sides. You taught me that.”

“I’m flattered you were listening. When you first accused Gordon and Tanner and Hapgood and me of being in league with St. Juste, you said something about Lord Carfax. What did St. Juste have to do with Carfax?”

Charles glanced at Mélanie. She lifted her brows, ceding the decision to him. He drew a breath, his friends’ confidences sifting through his brain. But he needed O’Roarke’s help. And if he was wrong and O’Roarke had been working with St. Juste, O’Roarke probably knew all of it already. Without prevarication, he told O’Roarke about St. Juste’s affair with Isobel and what Lucinda had overheard her father say to his informant about the investigation.

O’Roarke’s gaze remained on his face as he spoke. “That puts a different twist on things,” he said when Charles had done. ‘It’s a tricky business, setting spies to spy on one’s own agents. Carfax is a brilliant strategist. I assume he has his reasons.’

‘He may know about St. Juste’s affair with Bel and is afraid I’ll find evidence of it,’ Charles said.

‘That’s one explanation.’

‘Raoul.” Mélanie dropped down on the bed and curled her feet under her. ‘When did you last hear from Hortense?’

O’Roarke’s eyes went wide with rare surprise. ‘That was quick even for you, querida. How did you know?’

‘You mean you do know she’s in England? Damn it, Raoul—’

‘Hortense is in England?‘ O’Roarke said.

The former fellow spies stared at each other. Charles watched from the sidelines.

‘You first,’ Mélanie said.

O’Roarke rested his head against the worn velvet of the chair back. ‘Hortense is the one who gave me the papers to smuggle into England and asked me to find a printer for them.’

‘When?’

‘A month since. I went to see her in Arenenberg.’

Mélanie put her hand over her eyes. ‘I’m a complete and utter failure. I can’t tell when anyone’s lying anymore.’

‘I doubt that, but you’ll certainly be a failure if you waste time on self-recrimination. Tell me about Hortense being in England.’

Mélanie locked her hands round her knees and told him what she had previously told Charles, about meeting Hortense Bonaparte at the Lydgates’ ball and then again this afternoon in Hyde Park. ‘This is the second lie she told me. First she claimed not to have seen St. Juste in years, and then she said the same thing about you. I trusted her—’

‘It’s a common failing,’ Charles murmured.

‘She may have been trying to protect me,’ O’Roarke said.

‘From me?’ Mélanie asked.

‘You are married to the enemy. And you told her you’d stopped working for me.’

‘I’d never—’

‘Yes?’ O’Roarke said, watching her.

Mélanie chewed on her lower lip. ‘I told her we thought St. Juste was working with you. If she’d explained you had another reason for being in England it would have deflected suspicion from you.’

O’Roarke pulled his dressing gown closed at the throat. ‘Hortense never had her mother’s talent for intrigue. But her skills have improved over the years. If it’s true that Carfax is in possession of papers about her and Flahaut’s child—’

‘Did you know St. Juste kept papers about the child?’ Mélanie asked.

‘No, but it doesn’t surprise me. Though I am surprised Carfax got his hands on them. Your employer is an enterprising man, Charles.’

‘Former employer. Do you think St. Juste could have been using the existence of these papers to manipulate Queen Hortense?’

Mélanie rested her chin on her knees. ‘She asked me to retrieve the papers for her, which is just what you’d expect if the papers are what she says.’

‘If they are,’ Charles said.

‘St. Juste wouldn’t be above using Hortense,’ O’Roarke said. ‘But I don’t think he’d do anything to hurt her. Her mother was the only person I ever saw him display any real loyalty to.’

Charles turned to look O’Roarke full in the face. ‘Tell us about this paper of the Empress Josephine’s you sent Mélanie to steal from St. Juste ten years ago.’

‘I was wondering when you’d ask. You don’t know that it has anything to do with the current situation.’

‘The same key players are involved. It’s the start of the story.’

‘Yes, I suppose it is. In more ways than one.” O’Roarke stared into the fire for a moment. ‘I met Josephine when we were both imprisoned in Les Carmes during the Terror—she because her first husband had fallen from favor, me for writing and saying things the Government found inconvenient. Every day the Revolutionary Tribunal’s cart came with a list of prisoners to be tried and executed. It looked very much as if we were both going to die in the name of a Revolution we’d begun by supporting.” He glanced away again, his eyes hooded. ‘There are things one says at such a time that one would never dream of saying in the light of freedom and sanity. There are bonds that are formed that have nothing to do with the usual relations between men and women. I tell you this as a context for what comes after.’

Mélanie was watching him closely. Charles sensed this was a part of the story she’d never heard before, at least not in these words. ‘You were both released from prison,’ she said.

‘When the Tribunal fell and Robespierre was guillotined. Josephine escaped death by a day. It’s difficult to explain what those years of the Directoire were like. We’d cheated death and we were all a little drunk on freedom. There was unbridled license in all things.’

‘From what I hear of my parents’ generation, it was much the same in England at the time,’ Charles said.

‘Quite. Except in France we could be completely open about it. No more hiding behind the veneer of marriage and genteel society. Josephine was a widow with two children and no money. She needed a protector.’

‘Barras,’ Mélanie said.

‘Paul Barras, the most powerful of the Directors. It wasn’t an exclusive relationship. But she made him an admirable hostess. And he used her to extract information.’

‘What a surprise,’ Mélanie murmured.

O’Roarke regarded her for a moment, his own gaze unfathomable. ‘She wasn’t a trained spy. But her salon was the ideal place to gather intelligence. It was there that I met St. Juste.’

‘Carfax said he first heard of St. Juste as an agent for Fouché in the Ministry of Police,’ Charles said.

‘Yes. I’ve never been sure if St. Juste seduced Josephine for information or she seduced him, but by the time I met him they were already lovers. My first glimpse of him was turning the pages of her music in her salon. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen, with fair hair and the sort of smile that prompts young girls to scribble madly in their journals. He and I left Josephine’s together that evening and walked to the Palais Royal. Someone tried to pick St. Juste’s pocket. St. Juste stuck a knife in him without so much as breaking stride.’

‘Was St. Juste French?’ Charles asked.

‘I don’t think so, though I couldn’t place his original nationality. He was one of the best agents I’ve ever encountered. Present company excepted.’

‘The paper,’ Charles said. ‘The paper Josephine feared could destroy her.’

‘I’m coming to that.” O’Roarke’s gaze skimmed between them. ‘I know I can’t ask you to promise to keep quiet about this, but I will ask that you think carefully about what you do with the information I’m about to reveal.’

‘For God’s sake—’ Charles began.

‘I’m serious. Deadly serious. And I use the word advisedly.’

Charles had only heard that edge in O’Roarke voice once before, at the age of six, when he ran too near a stream with a swift-moving current. Across the room, Mélanie had gone completely still.

‘I’ve never been one to idly reveal a confidence,’ Charles said.

‘Nor have I,’ Mélanie added.

O’Roarke nodded. ‘I was in an out of Paris in the nineties, going back and forth between there and Ireland—’

‘I remember,’ Charles said.

‘So there was a great deal I didn’t know at the time. The first I heard of the paper in question was over a decade later. Josephine came to me in a panic in late 1809. By then there was pressure for Bonaparte to divorce her so he could make an alliance with a foreign princess and produce an heir. Josephine told me Fouché had got wind of the paper’s existence. She feared he would try to get it from St. Juste and use it against her.’

‘Because?’

O’Roarke was silent for a moment, as though he, to whom words came so easily, was choosing his exact words with care. ‘Barras had been Josephine’s protector. As principal Director, Barras had had charge of the young Dauphin.’

The room went so still one could hear the hissing of the lamp oil. Charles stared at his father, then shot a glance at his wife. She too was staring at O’Roarke, her face drained of color. The Dauphin, heir of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, rumored to have died in prison. Also rumored to have been smuggled out and hidden away. Rightful King of France if he resurfaced.

Charles dropped into the nearest chair. ‘My God. Are you saying—’

‘There were always rumors,’ Mélanie said. ‘That Barras and Josephine had smuggled the boy away. Tsar Alexander even claimed she’d confided as much to him. But I never really believed—’

‘Quite,’ O’Roarke said. ‘We know the Tsar’s penchant for elaboration. But for once he appears to have been telling the truth. According to Josephine, she and Barras switched the Dauphin for another boy with similar coloring early in 1794. The substitute boy died of natural causes a few months later. The real Dauphin was smuggled off to a safe location. Barras and Josephine employed St. Juste to switch the boys and see the Dauphin to safety. The letter Josephine was so desperate to get back was coded instructions to St. Juste about the boy’s transfer.’

Mélanie pressed a hand to her temple. ‘Sacrebleu. I understand her desperation. If Bonaparte had learned his wife knew the Dauphin was alive and had kept it from him—’

O’Roarke nodded. ‘Not to mention the uses Bonaparte’s enemies could have made of the information, either finding the real Dauphin or using the story to put forward an imposter.’

‘Where?’ Charles’s voice came out hoarse to his own ears. ‘Where is the boy?’

‘Josephine claimed she didn’t know herself for the boy’s own safety.’

‘But St. Juste did.’

‘He’d have had to.’

‘Putting a different spin on the reason he may have died.’

‘Among other things.’

‘The Wanderer.” Mélanie leaned forward, holding O’Roarke with her gaze. “Those men who captured Hortense and me eight years ago wanted St. Juste to tell them where the Dauphin had been hidden, didn’t they? And to think I actually believed you when you told me you had no notion what the Wanderer referred to.’

‘It seemed far safer for you not to know.’

‘For once I can see your point.” Mélanie settled her shoulders against the bedpost. ‘If Fouché knew this ten years ago, why didn’t he blackmail or torture it out of St. Juste long since?’

‘I don’t think Fouché knew the whole story. Only that St. Juste was in possession of a document that could be damaging to Josephine. In the end, Bonaparte did divorce her, the war worsened, and Fouché’s attentions turned elsewhere.’

‘Could St. Juste have hidden the Dauphin in England?’ Charles asked.

‘He could have hidden him anywhere.’

‘Yet England has certain advantages. It would be unexpected for a French agent to hide him in the heart of the enemy. And at the same time, England has a number of Royalist sympathizers who could be counted on to protect him. It’s where I’d have chosen.’

‘So would I,’ Mélanie said.

O’Roarke’s mouth curved slightly. ‘All right, yes, I might—I probably would—have done so as well. It doesn’t mean that’s what brought St. Juste to England now.’

‘But the boy’s never been more valuable,” Charles said. “Whoever could put him on the throne could control France. The only people who might not want him back are the current king and his adherents. Just about everyone else could use him to further their own agenda. Us, the Russians, the Austrians, a dozen different factions in France—’

‘Bonapartists who might see a puppet king as preferable to the current monarch,’ O’Roarke added. ‘But no, I haven’t been trying to find him.’

‘Why not?’ Charles asked.

‘France should be a Republic.’

‘That didn’t stop you from supporting Bonaparte.’

‘Rival monarchs lead to weak countries and infighting. You have only to look at your own country’s history.’

‘Did Hortense know about the Dauphin?’ Mélanie asked.

A shadow crossed O’Roarke’s face. ‘If Josephine confided in the Tsar— It’s possible she said something to Hortense at the end of her life.’

‘You think Hortense Bonaparte would be part of a plot to put the Dauphin on the throne of France?’ Charles asked.

Mélanie pleated a fold of her skirt between her fingers. ‘Hortense—at least the Hortense I knew or thought I knew—didn’t care much for rulers. But if she thought putting the Dauphin on the throne would allow her to return to France—” Mélanie shook her head. ‘When we recover the papers she wants from Carfax and see what they really are that will tell us something.’

‘Not to mention it would be good to find out what else Carfax knows.” O’Roarke shifted his gaze to Charles.

Charles stared at his father. “You’re telling me to break into Carfax House.”

“I’ve never told you to do anything, Charles. You’ve never worked for me. I’m suggesting it as a possible course of action.”

‘You already offered to get Hortense’s papers back,’ Mélanie said. ‘I’m just suggesting we look at what else Lord Carfax may possess.’

‘I’ll look,” Charles said.

‘You might not know—’

‘You want me to take you with me.’

‘Actually I was going to suggest you take Raoul.’

‘No.’

‘He could recognize—’

‘If you think there’s a chance in hell I’m going to turn a former French spymaster loose among Carfax’s papers—’

“This is no time for social niceties, Charles,” O’Roarke said. “Or for paying old debts.”

“I don’t see where debts come into it,” Charles said.

“No? My mistake then.”

‘We need to learn the truth—’ Mélanie said.

“We don’t know that Carfax could get us an inch closer to the truth. And you’re the last person who ought to be flinging that word about, Mel.”

“Thank you, darling. I’m aware of that fact.”

“Look—“

For the third time that night, a rap sounded on the door. “I’m sorry,” Laura Dudley said. She stood in the passage outside the door, her face as composed as ever, but her gown smeared with blood. “I’m afraid we have a bit of a crisis.”