The second paper held Denis’s terse reply.
I will meet with you to discuss the matter. Number 45 Curzon Street, 7 pm, Monday, March the 20th. I will send a coach if you require it.
Denis
As usual, Denis had used a large blank sheet for the three short sentences. Mr. Pickett had written back on the lower half of it.
Sir: I cannot tell you the relief I have had at receiving your reply. Thank you for your kind offer of the carriage, but I will not need it. The address is close enough for me to seek you on foot. I look forward to the meeting on Monday next, where I will explain what a wretched man I am.
Written in haste in sincere gratitude,
Bernard Pickett
I turned both letters over, but there was only one direction on them, that to Denis himself. Nothing addressed in return to Pickett. The first letter had also not come here to Curzon Street but had been directed to James Denis at an address in Jermyn Street. Denis had recently purchased a business on that road, a gaming hell known as the Nines. He must use an office there to filter his correspondence.
I examined the reply Denis had written, but no direction was on it either to or from Denis. “How did he get his response to Pickett?” I asked in bafflement.
“Mr. Denis has his replies hand-carried back to the Nines,” Gibbons intoned. “The gents what contact him know to look for their answers there.”
“Pity.” I laid the letters down in defeat. “I hoped I’d discover where Pickett lived. Close enough to walk, he writes. Even if he was not robust, that leaves many streets and houses in a wide radius.” I doubted Spendlove would reveal Pickett’s address whenever he found it out. Pomeroy might not either.
“I can tell you where the bloke was staying,” Gibbons surprised me by stating. “When he came to the Nines for Mr. Denis’s reply, I followed him.”
Chapter 8
“Good Lord.” I blinked at Gibbons, who stared lugubriously back at me. “You saw no reason to mention this before?”
“Ye only asked to see the letters,” Gibbons said. “Ye didn’t say why.”
I curbed my temper with effort. I suspected that shouting at Gibbons would only silence him. “Very well, where did Mr. Pickett go once he’d received Mr. Denis’s answer?”
“Park Place,” Gibbons answered without hesitation. “Round the corner from St. James’s Street. There’s a club there at number 7, with flats for gents.”
I wasn’t familiar with all the clubs in St. James’s, but Grenville would be.
“This hints that he’s a bachelor,” I mused. “A wife or children would need a house or a hotel.”
“Many a gent stays at clubs or in rooms in Town,” Gibbons said. “With family left in the country.”
“Possibly, though I’d think Pickett’s appeal to Denis would mention the dear wife and children who’d be devastated if something happened to him.” I lifted Pickett’s first letter. “He writes more like a man worried about his own skin, not one concerned for another’s sake.”
Gibbons’ pinched expression told me he was not much bothered about what Pickett wrote, and I didn’t argue further.
I read through each letter again, trying to memorize the sentences to repeat to Grenville. I wondered if Lord Eccleshal, Mr. Jones-Graves, or Sir Humphrey Godden would have any further knowledge of Pickett. So might Grenville’s friend Langley, who’d introduced Pickett to Grenville at Tattersalls. I did not know any of the gentlemen Pickett mentioned personally, but through Grenville, Donata, or Lady Aline, I might find a way to speak to them.
I wondered what Pickett had meant when he’d assured Denis that his problems were not immoral or obscene. Surely conspiracy to commit murder and overthrow the government would fall under acts that were immoral. Or perhaps he was trying to distance himself from them.
In the second letter Mr. Pickett described himself as wretched, and the tone was one of both relief and urgency.
Pickett had fully intended to meet Denis in the house I now sat in at seven o’clock yesterday evening. When he’d missed the appointment, Denis had carried on with his business, unworried.
“Why did Denis go to Seven Dials?” I asked abruptly. Stout had told me he’d gone to meet someone, but I wanted to hear what Gibbons would reply. “I assume he departed here after it was clear Pickett wouldn’t be coming?”
“Mr. Denis had his supper,” Gibbons said coldly. “At half past eleven, he announced we’d go to the Seven Dials house and spend the night there. I gathered the belongings he’d need, and we went.”
“What did he do there? And why stay the night?”
Unlike Stout, Gibbons didn’t state bluntly that Denis’s business was his own. He simply did not answer.
