The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes Page 2
Dear Sir,
The two glasses of wine I had with dinner must be my excuse for what I’m about to write, but . . . are you well? The tenor of your last letter makes me doubt it. Furthermore, to go from writing me nearly every second day to leaving a week between letters strikes me as very odd indeed. I assure you that I care not one whit about your well-being, so do not mistake my query for solicitude; I’m merely disconcerted by the sudden absence of a man who holds my fate in the palm of his hand. If you’ll permit some (un)friendly advice, I suggest that you avail yourself of your friends at the earliest opportunity.
I will explain this to you as if you were an infant or a small dog, and I will only do so once, so please dedicate all your powers of comprehension to attending to my words. You seem to be under the impression that by keeping what you persist in calling my secret, my life will return to its previous state. However, you have exposed the father of my child as a liar and a cheat. You cannot possibly expect me to return to a parody of matrimony with a man who is not my husband. Do you imagine that I will bear him more children? I am three and twenty. What am I to do for the remainder of my life?
When I agreed to marry the duke, I made a bargain, which he did not uphold. He’s thrown my life and that of my dearest friend into utter disarray and confusion, and even if you kept your secret, it would only push that confusion onto future generations. Furthermore, you are not the only person in possession of the information that you hold over my head. What you’re asking me to do is to pay five hundred pounds for scant peace of mind and the dubious privilege of living as the wife of a man who has done wrong to me and to all the people I care for in this world.
MH
* * *
Dear Marian,
When you put it that way, it makes this project of mine seem almost tawdry. My feelings might get hurt. In all sincerity, here is the problem: I will not keep the Duke of Clare’s secret for free.
Regarding your first paragraph, you will perhaps not be surprised to learn that I managed to bollocks up all my friendships due to the small matter of having let them all believe I died a year ago. In my defense, it seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to do at the time. Now, however, I’m rather at a loss for how to explain my continued existence without incurring their wrath.
Your obedient servant,
X
P.S. Aphra Behn, The Dolphin, near the Temple Stairs
* * *
You utter madman,
What is wrong with you? I mean that sincerely. Tell them you’re alive, you lunatic. Of course they will be cross with you, but what kind of coward must you be to fear their anger when the alternative is their grief, not to mention your own? Do you realize how very spoiled you sound, speaking of friends, in the plural, no less, and wondering whether you can cast them aside because their entirely justified anger would inconvenience you?
Regarding your unwillingness to keep the Duke of Clare’s secret for free, permit me to point out that you expect Lord Holland and I to pay for the privilege of keeping that same secret. I have neither any enthusiasm for a lifetime of deception, nor the temperament to sustain hope that the truth of our situation will remain concealed. And for this you ask five hundred pounds? You cannot possibly have thought this through.
M
P.S. This makes two letters in a row that I’m to leave for dead poets and playwrights. Have you run out of silly names to make me say aloud to unsuspecting publicans?
* * *
Dear Marian,
I hardly know where to begin with my worries.
First, are you delivering these letters yourself? If so, stop at once. Send a boy. Good Lord. The idea of you traipsing about in some of the quarters where I’ve been receiving my mail is giving me palpitations.
Second, you mention my aliases, which makes me wonder if you’re saving these letters. Again, stop at once. Burn them.
Yours in utter horror,
R
P.S. Araminta Cleghorn, The Swan, near St. James’s, a very respectable and safe part of town
* * *
Dear R,
Naturally I save your letters. I press them with posies between the pages of my favorite volume of poetry. Or perhaps I sleep with them beneath my pillow.
Of course I burn them, you thoroughgoing halfwit. What kind of fool do you take me for?
As for the rest, don’t worry about my safety. Trust that I have the matter well in hand. I’ve become quite adept at climbing down the trellis and distracting the guard dogs. It’s been years since I turned my hand at learning something new, and this business at least has the advantage of occupying my full faculties.
M
* * *
Dear Marian,
I’m choosing to believe that you aren’t serious about climbing out of windows. Perhaps you mean to give me a heart attack and thus rid yourself of me. If so, excellent work; I’ll certainly have expired by dawn.
Now I need to know in what volume of poetry you would save my letters, if you had a mind to do such a harebrained thing. A week ago I would have guessed Pope, based on the sheer orderliness of his verse. But now that I know about your penchant for danger, I hardly know what to think.
Yours,
R
P.S. Christopher Marlowe, The Star, Westminster
* * *
Dear R,
I’m in some difficulties imagining what it must be like to be the sort of person who receives, much less saves, love letters. Ill-tempered women of middling looks seldom are the recipients of tender feelings; this is not a complaint, as my experience with men is such that I’d be perfectly happy to live out the rest of my days inspiring no feelings whatsoever, tender or otherwise, in any member of that sex.
At one point I might have said Donne, but I find the Aeneid more suitable to my present state.
M
* * *
Dear Marian,
Dryden’s translation? And is this an indication that your present state is violent and harassed by the gods?
I regret to inform you that ill-tempered women, regardless of looks, are as catnip to some men. The fact that you do not know this alarms me.
Yours,
R
P.S. Anna Gentry, The Angel, Islington
* * *
Dear R,
The original Latin, and emphatically yes.
There’s something infinitely comforting in reading about the misadventures of people who have managed to ruin their lives even more comprehensively than one has done oneself. Naturally, I’m speaking of Dido, whose principal problem is Aeneas but whose secondary problem is a stunning lack of perspective. When she fails to fortify the walls of Carthage (it’s been a while, so please forgive my poor memory) in favor of dallying with Aeneas I want to shake her; things, of course, only get worse from there.
M
* * *
Dear Marian,
I can’t believe I’m about to write a defense of Aeneas and Dido, and that entirely based on seeing Purcell’s opera some years ago and a copy of Dryden’s translation that I skimmed this evening. First, you really can’t fault Dido for neglecting her duties in favor of Aeneas when she was quite literally made to do so by the gods. She didn’t stand a chance. You can see her poor mind start to go, which seems like precisely what would become of anyone who was pushed around by no fewer than three gods.
This is probably a regrettable example of my modern sensibilities failing to grasp the nuances of the classical mind, but honestly I do not give a fig and feel nothing but compassion for all the poor fools in all those tiresome epics.
Furthermore, I take issue with your statement that you ruined your life. One, it isn’t ruined. Two, you didn’t do anything wrong.
Yours in ignorance,
R
P.S. Samuel McAllister, The George and Dragon, near Billingsgate Fish Market
* * *
Dear R,
Forgive me, but I’ll be the judge as to whether my own life is ruined.
Rest assured I’m not going to throw myself on any funeral pyres, though.
I believe it’s a total of five gods who conspire to bedevil poor Dido, and when you think of it like that, it’s most unfair that Dante has her in hell (albeit one of the outermost circles) for her lust. If she were to be punished for anything, it ought to be poor management of Carthage’s building projects.
Have you reconciled with your friends? It’s probably terribly indelicate of me to allude to things I learn in the course of following you about, but I have seen you lingering in the vicinity of a certain coffeehouse even though that establishment is closed for the night. You look very sad, and sometimes you even forget to keep to the darkest shadows, which I can only interpret as a sign of great distress and distraction, as you ordinarily have no trouble at all evading me. Screw your courage to the sticking place (whatever that means). Just get it over with. Go inside.
M
* * *
Dear Marian,
I took your advice. I was slapped, scolded, and otherwise abused but I think they’re more or less at peace with my being, as you once put it, an utter lunatic. For reasons that are too complicated to put on paper, I can’t give them the reason for my deception. But, as fate would have it, they seem to understand that for me to have done what I did, I must have had a compelling cause. I’m relieved that they seem more pleased by my existence than dismayed by my dishonesty.
Now it’s my turn to be indelicate. Trust me that I’d have been done away with years ago if I wasn’t able to keep track of when I am and am not in the shadows; if you can see me, it’s because I’m letting you see me. You didn’t think I’d let you wander about town without being on hand to offer you aid in the event you came to grief, did you?
R
P.S. Theodore Pike, The Saracen’s Head, near Smithfield Market
* * *
Dear R,
Of course they’re glad you’re alive. I hope you don’t need me to point out that this is what makes them your friends.
As for the rest of your letter, I won’t even do you the courtesy of a response. Perhaps tonight I’ll sneak up on you and steal your hat.
Yours,
Marian
* * *
Dearest Marian,
May I suggest that tonight, instead of stealing my hat, you talk to me? It’s come to my attention that our social spheres overlap somewhat, and also that we are each in possession of information that might do the other some good.
If that doesn’t suit, we could meet in daylight, if you can contrive it.
Your obedient servant,
R
P.S. Adam Clark, The Bull and Bush, Kensington
Chapter 1
December 1751
The day before the incident
As soon as the man passed out—very anticlimactically, Marian was disappointed to note, just like falling asleep—Marian pulled the silk cord from her pocket and set to work binding his wrists. Things were going remarkably well, for once; perhaps she was finally reaping the benefits of meticulous planning. Downstairs in the decidedly seedy public house that the man was wont to frequent, she had slipped the laudanum in his drink and then lured him upstairs before he showed signs of being the worse for wear. When she suggested a hand of cards, he had very obligingly collapsed before she had even finished dealing them out.
“He didn’t even finish his beer,” Dinah observed when she entered the hired room, bolting the door behind her. “How much did you put in there?”
“It was the same amount you gave me to take after Eliza was born.” Marian had measured it out very carefully, making sure not to include a drop more or a drop less. The goal, after all, was only to knock the man out long enough to bind him. Marian did not fancy herself a murderer.
Dinah frowned skeptically and nudged the man with the toe of her boot.
Marian finished tying the knot and got to her feet. “Come, you can kick him all you like later on, but first let’s get him into bed.”
“Why?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why don’t we just leave him there?”
They both looked at the recumbent form of the blackmailer. His wrists were secured, and he looked comfortable enough, not that Marian particularly cared about whether the swine was comfortable, even if he was bound to wake up mightily sore after spending the night on the cold, bare floor.
“He needs to be in the bed so I can tie him to the bedposts,” Marian decided.
Dinah shrugged a sort of pro forma acquiescence. Marian supposed that she was not paying Dinah nearly enough to pretend that anything happening in this room made sense or was a good idea. Marian had parted company with good ideas some while ago. The very next day Percy was going to hold up his father’s carriage in order to steal a book the duke—which was to say Percy’s father, of course—would pay handsomely to have returned to him. This, they hoped, would give Percy, Marian, and Marian’s daughter enough to live on. A year ago, Marian would have been appalled by the recklessness of this scheme, but a year ago Marian hadn’t been worn down by a run of catastrophes. A year ago Marian hadn’t known what it meant to be desperate.
Right now, her principal concern was making sure that Rob was hors de combat during tomorrow’s hold up. Percy’s highwayman friend trusted Rob, but probably a lot of people who ought to know better trusted Rob.
With his wrists bound together, it was impossible to get a purchase on his arms. He kept flopping about like a rag doll—except a rag doll who was considerably larger than either of the women.
“You need to untie the knot,” Dinah said.
“I don’t want to. If he wakes up, he’ll kill us.”
“He’s not going to kill us. You’re worth five hundred pounds to him.”
That was about as comforting a thought as she was likely to have in these circumstances. “All right,” Marian said, and knelt to untie the knot. “Quick, now.” They each grabbed an arm and hauled him across the room, the heels of his boots dragging on the bare wood floor. As soon as he was on the bed, Marian tied one of his wrists to the bedpost and breathed a sigh of relief. She took another cord from her pocket—she had come prepared with enough cords to tie up a squid—and set to work on the other arm.
Only when he was secured did she let herself look at him. The scant light in the shabby room came from a branch of candles that sat on the card table beside two abandoned hands of Mariage and a pair of pewter tankards containing ale laced with laudanum. She retrieved the candle branch and held it over the man’s unconscious form. She had seen him before, of course, but only from a distance and under cover of night, and she had been more concerned with following his movements than in studying his features.
He had reddish hair, which he wore unpowdered and in a queue. He was about her own age, give or take a year or two. There was a scar bisecting one eyebrow, and another on his cheek. Stubble grew in faint and ruddy along his jaw.
Disconcertingly, a bridge of freckles crossed his nose and then scattered all over the rest of his face. She felt certain that blackmailers shouldn’t have freckles. It seemed a decidedly unvillainous characteristic. Then again, she supposed she didn’t much look like a kidnapper or poisoner; she had always thought her profile sadly lacking in panache.
She moved to put the candles back on the table, but Dinah stayed her, clamping a hand on Marian’s wrist. Marian watched in some chagrin as Dinah cast what appeared to be an appreciative eye over the blackmailer.
Marian snatched her hand away, plunging the recumbent figure into shadows. “You’ll have plenty of time to admire him when you check on him throughout the day.”
“Unless there’s a baby,” Dinah said, because she had a life outside aiding and abetting felonies, alas.
“I’ll come back as soon as I can.” With any luck, by then she and Percy would have what they needed from the duke and wouldn’t need to worry about the blackmailer anymore. All she needed to do was ensure that when Percy held up the duke’s carria
ge, this man was far away and therefore couldn’t interfere. He was precisely the sort of man who did interfere, who made an absolute sacrament of sticking his nose where it didn’t belong, and she couldn’t afford any of that. Tomorrow night she would let him go and never have to think about him again.
She didn’t know why, after a year of relentlessly dismal luck, she thought things could possibly start to go her way now.
Chapter 2
Rob knew he had been drugged before he was quite conscious. He was hardly inexperienced with opium; God knew he had had enough of it poured down his throat before having bones shoved back into place or wounds sewn shut to know how it made his mouth dry, his thoughts clouded.
Then he remembered who had drugged him, and his eyes flew open. Only then did he realize that his wrists were tied and that he was alone.
Rob didn’t much care for being restrained. He supposed few people did, but he had spent enough time imprisoned to have an especially dim view of the practice. He was decidedly against it and would make sure Marian had a piece of his mind when she got back. If she got back.
Of course she would come back. She couldn’t mean to let him rot alone in a tiny room. If she wanted to murder him she would have done precisely that; she was not a woman who did things by halves or who balked at taking decisive action. This was a comforting thought. Besides, he could hear people in the street below; he could always scream, he supposed.
Or he could—he tugged one of his wrists—yes, he could. These weren’t proper ropes and they certainly weren’t shackles. They were scarcely stronger than hair ribbons and conveniently silky. His neck was predictably stiff but he was able to turn his head far enough to the side to see what he was doing. Yes, if he moved his thumb, and . . . all right, that hurt quite a bit, and a broken finger wasn’t going to do him any good right now. He took a deep breath and forced himself to ignore his rising panic and instead work slowly.