Moriarty Meets His Match: A Professor & Mrs. Moriarty Mystery (The Professor & Mrs. Moriarty Mystery Series Book 1) (27 page)

Chapter Thirty-Three

Angelina needed every scrap of her experience as an actress to get through dinner that night. She sat spooning soup into her mouth, responding politely when spoken to, smiling at nothing otherwise. Reginald was the soul of courtesy, offering to send for more bread or a different wine. He seemed cheerful, even gay, treating her like a fiancée whom he had finally persuaded to visit the family retreat. Had he truly forgotten his hideous assault on her person? Or worse, did he think that was a normal form of courtship?

Reginald beckoned the footman to refill her glass. “My father has news for us, my darling. Something good, I hope.” He winked at her. She had to bite the inside of her lip to keep from flinching.

Lord Nettlefield had said little during the meal. He’d sat in his Louis Quinze armchair at the head of the table, smiling to himself. She had no idea why. Was he happy? Angry? Happy because he was angry?

She and Lady Rochford barely had time for a single cup of coffee before the men joined them in the east drawing room. Nettlefield ignored his aunt, flicking his fingers at Angelina as if she were a servant. “I’d like a word with you in my library.”

He ushered her before him, crossing the hall in silence but for the clapping of their footsteps. Entering the library, he dismissed the secretary. The poor man had taken his dinner from a tray while working. Angelina’s eyes were drawn to the open pages of an account book. She pulled her gaze away to offer Lord Nettlefield a questioning smile.

“Sit,” he said, waving at a chair before his desk. He walked around to the other side, picked up a sheet of paper, and read it, still standing, chuckling at whatever he read. Finally, he turned toward her. “I’ve had an answer, at last, from the Pinkerton Agency in New York. Have you heard of them?”

Who hadn’t? Pinkertons were notorious in the United States, especially in the West. Her stomach clenched. What had he learned?

“I wrote to them as soon as that fool son of mine began to show an interest in you. I had my doubts from the beginning and now they’ve been confirmed. You’re a fraud, Angelina. I know all about you.”

Angelina held his gaze, willing herself to stay calm. He couldn’t know everything. The Pinkertons couldn’t go farther back than San Francisco.

“Your name isn’t Gould. I’m not sure what I should call you.” Nettlefield wagged his finger at her. “That mining engineer never married you. Too smart, I’d wager. Your so-called cousin, John Jay Gould, has never heard of you or your paramour. He said, and I quote, ‘There are Goulds coming out of the woodwork these days.’ Not a flattering image, is it? You’re not an heiress; far from it. You’re not even an American.”

“I am. I was born in Philadelphia.”

“Were you?” Nettlefield frowned at his telegram. “Not as thorough as they claim.”

She shrugged. “Backstage at the Chestnut Street Theatre. I can’t think how they missed that little tidbit. But we were back in England before my first birthday, so perhaps the omission can be excused.” She tilted her chin defiantly.

He dismissed her bravado with a curl of the lip. “At any rate, you met Victor Gould in San Francisco, where you were going by the name —” He consulted the sheet again. “Angelina della Rosa. Very colorful. Victor seems to have been a real engineer, although he’d been involved in a few shady ventures even before he got himself entangled with a ballet girl.”

“I was singing the lead role in
La Traviata
on the stage of the Adelphi!” Angelina could tolerate many insults, but that went beyond the pale. “San Francisco is the Paris of the West.”

“Still no place for a respectable woman. You were happy enough to leave your operatic career and follow Gould to a barbarous place called Santa Fe in the territory of New Mexico. A place outside the reach of the United States authorities. What were you running from, I wonder?”

“Nothing. Victor had a job surveying silver mines.”

“He must not have been very good at it. He left you nearly penniless when he died. You took your talents to the Eastern Seaboard, where you lived on other people’s — assumptions, shall we say. The same game you’ve been playing here. You circulate a plausible tale, appear in a plausible costume, and let gullible society women imagine the rest. Your dear friend in New York was horrified to learn how she’d been deceived. She told my agent you had accepted her hospitality while searching for a long-lost brother. Do you even have a brother, Angelina?”

She said nothing. She wouldn’t offer her darling angels up to for his examination.

Nettlefield shrugged. “Having worn out your welcome in America, you crossed to England to play your game. A new arena with fresh victims. You might have succeeded if you’d kept away from my son. You’re nothing more than a confidence trickster, Angelina.” He shook the letter at her. “I could have you arrested on the evidence in this wire alone. The Pinkerton man is prepared to sail at my request to bring testimony against you in court.”

Angelina’s mouth went dry with fear. Why hadn’t he already brought charges against her? He’d been eager enough to throw her in jail last Sunday. “What do you want from me?”

Nettlefield chuckled. “You’re quick-witted. I appreciate that. It will make you more useful.” He came around to her side and leaned a hip against the desk, looming over her. She had to tilt her head back to look into his face. “You’re mine now, Angelina. You’ll do as I tell you or spend the rest of your life in prison.”

Trapped! Just like Sebastian. She’d concocted this elaborate ruse, spending months working her way into society, lying to friends, committing real crimes, only to get herself caught in the same net. “What do you expect me to do?”

“I expect you to go where I tell you and do what I ask, without fuss. You’ll have to marry someone to give you a cover. Not my son; you can forget about that.” He caught her breath of relief and grinned again. “Although there’s no reason he shouldn’t enjoy himself before you leave us. He does hate to be denied his little pleasures, and since you’re certainly not a lady . . .”

Angelina recoiled, unable to mask her fear and disgust.

He chuckled at her distress. “He won’t damage you, not visibly. I’ll find you a husband I can control. Someone who won’t mind if his wife spends much of her time in other men’s beds. Because that’s where you’ll be, teasing out the secrets I need. I’ve long suspected that Teaberry has an agent inside the Foreign Office, bringing him juicy bits of information at the opportune moment. He doesn’t always share what he learns. Now I’ll have my own inside source.”

His excited gaze roamed across her face and figure. “You’re perfect for my purposes, a beautiful woman with your particular skills. I’ll have Teaberry dancing to my tune for a change.”

“I won’t do it.” Angelina lifted her chin. “I’ll simply leave the country.”

“And I’ll simply have you brought back in restraints.” Nettlefield shook the letter at her again. “You’ve defrauded influential persons in America, and I can prove it. What would I find if I put an inquiry agent on your trail in England?”

She pressed her lips together.

“Many interesting things, I perceive.” He sniffed. “I don’t see why you should scruple. It’s much the same as what you’ve been doing all your life. Only now you’ll by playing your tricks in the service of a larger purpose —
my
purpose. I own you, Angelina, or whatever your name is. You’re mine.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

“Sandy! Gabriel Sandy! Where are you, you godforsaken son of a she-devil?”

Moriarty ran through the choppy streets around Covent Garden, shouting himself hoarse, weeping into the rain that streamed down his face. He’d come down to the theater district in the forlorn hope of finding allies to help him rescue Angelina, but he seldom ventured into these precincts at night. In his distracted state, the city had turned foreign and menacing. He had soon lost his way. He couldn’t find anything or anyone to help him in this dark labyrinth.

He stumbled on, aiming for a cluster of blurry lights that he hoped would mark the Royal Opera House. There must be hansom cabs there, lots of them. Someone must know Gabriel Sandy.

The man was his last hope. If he couldn’t find him, he’d have to storm Canbury Park alone, on foot, armed with a clutch of pencils, he supposed. He owned no weapons and wouldn’t know how to use them if he did. Never had the quiet, sober life of a mathematician seemed so futile!

He’d been mad to think Sherlock Holmes would come to his aid. The eccentric detective had chosen him as an antagonist from the moment they’d met and he wasn’t the sort who could admit an error. All Moriarty had achieved by his rash attempt to overcome that prejudice was to set the sleuth-hound on Angelina’s track.

He slipped on the wet cobblestones and scraped against a spiked iron railing. He spotted a man across the street wearing three coats whose hair looked ginger under the streetlamp. He dashed through the mud and grabbed him by the shoulders, wrenching him bodily around to stare into his face. His eyes met an angry snarl in a tangle of beard. Wrong man.

“Gerrofit!” The man cursed and shoved him away.

“Sorry. So sorry.” Moriarty rubbed his hands over his wet scalp. His hat was long gone.

He choked on a cloud of greasy smoke emitted from a vent beside a steamy window. Some workman’s cafe. He shouted “Sandy!” at the window as he jogged past, doubting anyone could hear him. He splashed through a puddle of filth, staining his trousers to the knee. “Sandy, God rot your bones! Where are you?”

A small hand fastened onto his coat and shook it. “Mister! Mister!”

Moriarty looked down on a gap-toothed boy wearing a frock coat two sizes too big. He blinked at him for a moment, then sighed and fished a penny from his pocket.

“Not that,” the boy said, but kept the coin. “You’re to come wiv me. Cap’n Sandy sent me.”

“Thank God!” Moriarty swept the boy into his arms, hugging him fiercely to his chest. Setting him back on the ground, he found a shilling in his pocket and pressed it into the grimy hand.

“Don’t cry, Mister.” The boy patted at him. “’Tain’t seemly, a posh gent like you.”

Moriarty allowed the boy to lead him back to the cafe. Sandy and Zeke were both there, peering into the rain from the doorway. They shook their heads as they looked him up and down.

Zeke whistled. “Lookit ’im! Mud on ’is face. Trousers ruint. And where’s ’is ’at?”

“Come in, Professor,” Sandy said. The worry written across his face sobered Moriarty. He must look like a madman escaped from Bethlem Royal Hospital.

The cafe was hot and stuffy after the rain-swept streets. Moriarty shed his coat and scarf before sliding into the booth beside Zeke. Sandy ordered three pots of strong tea. He offered to add a hearty breakfast to the order, but Moriarty shook his head. He couldn’t eat; he might never eat again.

“What’s happened, Professor? It must be something dire. Did they try to arrest you again? Do you need a place to hide?”

“No, no! God, no! I am perfectly safe. Snug in my secure lodgings with my secure job. Heaven forfend that should be disrupted! No, no. I am fine — apart from being damned into the lowest circle of hell.”

Sandy and Zeke traded dark looks. “Shall I run for a pill-pusher?” Zeke asked.

“I don’t need a doctor,” Moriarty said. He laughed bitterly. “I don’t even need a judge. I can judge myself. The judges of hell will judge me. I’m the vilest, lowest, most despicable —”

“Tell us what happened, Professor,” Sandy said. “We have no idea what you’re babbling about.”

“You don’t?” Surely Angelina’s peril had been blazoned across the skies.

Their tea came. Zeke ladled sugar into a big cup and pushed it toward Moriarty. “Drink it up, Professor. ’Ot and sweet; that’s the ticket.”

Moriarty sipped at the scalding brew. The familiar fragrance alone restored a semblance of sanity. “I blamed her, Sandy. I railed at her. I accused her of the vilest things. Then I left her there, at the mercy of those . . .” He shuddered and took another sip. It burned his tongue. He welcomed the pain. “Of course she’s innocent, completely innocent; a fool would have known it. I should have trusted her the way she trusted me. She was right, I was wrong, and now they’ve got her. I can’t bear to think about what they’ll do.”

He grabbed Sandy’s wrist, gripping it so hard the cabman winced in pain. “You’re my last hope. We have to get her out of there. I know she’ll never speak to me again. I don’t care about that. It’s no more than I deserve. I deserve far worse; but first we must save her!”

Sandy pried Moriarty’s fingers from his wrist. His expression was grim. “I’d do anything for Angelina, you know I would. I’ll settle with you once she’s safe. But what can we do? She’s all the way out there in Canbury, locked in an upstairs room, we’re told.”

Moriarty stared at him, struggling to bring his wits back to life. Then the solution came to him and he grinned, an uncheerful expression that made Zeke press himself away. “You’re burglars, aren’t you? What do you say we break into one last house?”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Angelina left the library in a daze. She needed air, a walk outside. A cup of tea with a trusted friend. But she had no friends in this house and they’d never let her out again tonight. Elsie dogged her steps. If she did nothing else, she would take back the playbill with Sebastian’s picture. She couldn’t bear to think of her brother forever smiling at that traitorous slut.

She climbed the central stair and walked almost to the door of her own bedchamber but couldn’t bring herself to go in. Not yet. They would lock the door behind her. She found her way to the long gallery and began to walk up and down the lavishly decorated room.

Lemon-yellow wallpaper and lime-green chairs. Tall Chinese vases with bright red dragons coiled on their lids. Paintings of long-nosed toffs in powdered wigs watched her from the walls, their disapproving gazes reflected in the tall gilt mirrors placed between the taller windows. Elsie slumped on a silk sofa near the door, stretching her weary feet before her while her prisoner paced.

Angelina turned again at the far end. This time, she caught a glimpse of Lady Rochford sitting placidly beside an unlit hearth with a needlework frame. Angelina angled across the carpet to stand beside her. “Won’t they light the fire for you?”

“I prefer a cool room.” She gave Angelina a knowing look. “I heard about the telegram.” She patted the sofa beside her.

Angelina sat and rested her hands in her lap. This wily old woman might not be a friend, but she could perhaps be a temporary ally. “Were you very much disappointed?”

“Not even surprised, my dear. No genuine heiress would suffer in last year’s gowns when Paris is so close at hand.” She lifted one lace-shrouded shoulder. “Why should I care? You paid me what I asked. That was our bargain. What will you do now?”

“I must escape this place. Tonight, if I can manage it. To be perfectly candid, my lady, I’m afraid of Reginald.”

“I can’t say I blame you. My great-nephew doesn’t like to be crossed. I never expected them to be able to hold you here for so long. And I agree, the telegram changes everything.” She gazed out the windows, where rain spattered against the darkened glass, lips pursed while she thought.

After a moment, she smiled. “The gardener and I have achieved a rapport over the years. He truly understands the composition of a parterre. I believe his son has begun delivering flowers to Cheshire House this past week, as well as to our London house. That was never part of his job before.”

“They’ve been helping me.” Angelina owed them all a week in Brighton. “If I could get a note out of the house, Lady Lucy would know where to send it.”

“Do you have someplace else to go? You can’t go back to Lucy.”

“Yes, for a little while. Long enough to book passage to the Continent. I have friends here and there.”

“I imagine you do, Miss Della Rosa,” Lady Rochford said. “My nephew may be a philistine, but I know something of the opera. You had quite a reputation.”

“Thank you.”

Lady Rochford picked up her needle and made another stitch in her work. “Why did you come here, if I may ask? Surely not for a titled husband; you could have found one of those in Italy.”

Angelina understood. Gossip was the lady’s stock in trade, and the deep shelves needed constant refilling. She gave her a much-abridged version of the truth, implying the source of the government secrets was a young lady and tiptoeing delicately around the specific agency which had been breached. She made a good story out of it in spite of the gaps, playing up the pathos of her brother’s plight and painting Oscar Teaberry as the blackest of villains. “Who knows how many honorable young men he’s driven to ruin?”

“I knew there was something going on. My nephew’s gains have been too big and too consistent. My investments never produce such reliable yields.” Lady Rochford’s gray eyes glittered. “Well, well. The viscount will learn to regret not sharing with his dear old auntie. Oh, how I despise that Teaberry, the loathsome little upstart. He offends me. I may not be overly fond of my nephew, but it galls me to see the way that jumped-up music hall impresario leads him by the nose. I’ll pay them both back with the same coin. Or rather, you’ll do it for me.”

She looked up and down the gallery, her gaze flicking past Elsie, who sat picking at her fingernails. Then she beckoned to Angelina to slide a little closer and lowered her voice. “One morning, I sat dozing over my needlework in the striped drawing room. There’s no fire in the morning, so no one else uses it then. No one notices me in my favorite corner, which happens to have a view of the comings and goings on the great stair. The mirror over the mantel reflects the mirror between the windows, you see, which is lined up with the door leading onto the landing. I see everyone that goes up or down.

“One day that sly secretary poked his head out of the door across the landing. I mean quite literally poked out only his head. He looked up and down and across, but he didn’t notice me in my little jungle of aspidistras. He ducked back and reemerged with a slim green book and a bundle of letters tied with a ribbon. He slipped across the landing and tucked them behind the portrait of that man with the spaniel my nephew always refers to as ‘the ancestor.’ Not his ancestor, of course. The portrait came with the house. I imagine you’ll still find those little items hidden inside the frame. I haven’t troubled myself to look, but why would Ramsay hide them if they weren’t something fairly damning?”

Hope rose in Angelina’s chest. She smiled at her benefactress. “Why would a secretary keep secrets from his employer?”

“Blackmail leaps to mind.” Lady Rochford wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like that fellow. He’s too earnest. So tediously middle class. I do like
you,
my dear. You’re never boring. And I should enjoy hearing you sing one day.” She patted Angelina’s hand again. “I imagine you’ll find something in those papers that will keep the hounds off your trail.”

“Lady Rochford, you are the most wonderful woman in the world!” Angelina planted a light kiss on her cheek. “How can I ever repay you?”

Her ladyship chuckled, a rich, fruity sound. “I’m sure we’ll think of something.”