The man brayed a laugh. “Oh, they mentioned it now and then, pretending to be reformers. The only reform they wanted was a way to bring windfalls to themselves. Weren’t grand landholders, you understand. Minor gentry, I’d say, looking to feather their nests. The next swift horse or the best boxer were their grandest plans.”
His cynicism shrouded him like an impenetrable cloak. But perhaps he was right—Pickett had started to strike me as someone who believed himself more involved in the world than he truly was.
“The noise should cease now,” I assured the man. “We will take ourselves away.”
He gave me a grudging nod. “See that the Runner doesn’t come back.”
I fervently hoped he would not.
“We need to find his usual bookmaker,” Spendlove said as we climbed into the hackney he’d commanded to wait for us. “That Hawes fellow didn’t know it.” He clutched a hastily scribbled list, its ink smeared, which I assumed contained names and addresses of Pickett’s shooting friends. “He’ll have a stall at Tattersall’s, I’ll make a guess. You can get me in there—you go enough with Mr. Grenville.”
“Finsbury Square,” I corrected him.
Spendlove glared at me as the coach jerked forward. “How do you know?”
“It was in Pickett’s diary,” I said.
“His what?” Spendlove’s lip curled. “Where did you find that?”
I moved uncomfortably in the seat. “In Pickett’s rooms, when I searched them before. I planned to turn it in to Pomeroy.” Once I’d gone over it to my satisfaction, but I saw no reason to include this detail.
“You should have brought it strait to me, damn you.”
“I am trying to prove Denis innocent,” I said coolly. “There was nothing significant in the diary apart from Pickett’s appointment with Denis on his last night. I did not wish you to use that fact as another nail in Denis’s coffin.”
“I’ll have it from you anyway.” Spendlove turned his surly gaze out the window, as though the pile of St. James’s Palace we passed displeased him. “Take it to Bow Street when we’re finished today.”
As I’d not gotten much more out of the diary, I didn’t mind, but Spendlove’s command irritated me. I said nothing, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
Spendlove banged on the roof and curtly told the driver to take us to Finsbury Square. The coachman muttered something and slammed the trap door closed.
As the coach left St. James’s, it passed Carlton House, the elegantly columned building with fantastic rooms inside, which I’d had the privilege to view. It had been all but abandoned now by the new king, Grenville had told me. King George had moved to Buckingham House, where his mother had lived, with plans to expand that edifice and redecorate it to his taste.
The glories of Carlton House would be no more. A pity, I thought, and a waste.
Spendlove said not a word as we rattled on through Cockspur Street to the Strand, nor did he read the list of names crumpled in his hand, reflect on them, or share them with me. I tried to glimpse what was on the paper, but he held it too tightly in his fist for me to see.
Finsbury Square lay north of the ancient City wall, developed out of the old Moorfields area. Moorfields had once been an open green—the moor drained long ago—used by dyers for drying cloth and around which notorious highwaymen had taken residence. Now Moorfields held a circular convergence of streets, one leading north to Finsbury Square.
“A balloonist lifted off there,” I said, gesturing to a gate that led to artillery grounds just before we reached the square.
“Eh?” Spendlove stared where I pointed, as though believing Pickett’s murderer was ready to launch himself away to safety. “What balloonist? Where?”
“Thirty-five years ago, now. He went all the way to Hertfordshire. Quite the sensation.”
I’d been a boy at the time, ready to take up ballooning as a profession. My father, of course, tore up the newspapers that printed the balloonist’s story, lectured me on what a fool I was, and forbade me from ever speaking of the matter again.
Spendlove curled his lip at my explanation and then ignored me. He had much in common with my father, I reflected, though Spendlove possessed a bit more intelligence.
We rolled into the square, passing Lackington’s Library—referred to as the Temple of the Muses because of its many tomes within. I’d brought Gabriella here, and she’d been enchanted with the multitude of books in glass cases, the long windows looking out to the square, and the comfortable nooks where we could read to our heart’s content.
The bookmaker’s establishment we sought was a few doors down from Lackington’s. The house appeared to be respectable enough, with a front door neatly painted in dark green, one curtained window beside it. Double windows rose two more stories, each as orderly as the ground floor.
“Please refrain from terrifying everyone inside,” I said when we climbed from the coach. “Like you did with Hawes. He was lying to us, I believe, though I’m not certain about what.”
Chapter 21
Spendlove slammed the coach’s door once he was on the street. “’Course he was lying. Everyone lies to the Runners. They are all guilty of something they don’t want found out.”
