The Custom House Murders (Captain Lacey Mysteries #15) - Ashley Gardner Page 0,1
some reward for it.
My wife’s servants, proud of their status as staff to a viscount and his mother, had been coolly distant at first to Brewster, a ruffian and thief who did not hide his past, but they’d begun warming to him. Brewster could be blunt and rude—he was to me, always—but he was also loyal, friendly, and even kind in his own way, when he wished to be.
Brewster turned up at my home almost every morning to escort me on even the most trivial of errands. He no longer worked for Denis, who had employed Brewster to keep me alive and useful, but he continued to watch over me because, in Brewster’s opinion, I needed a minder.
He came up from the kitchens after I sent Bartholomew down to him, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, and met me in the ground floor hall. A sweeping staircase, paneled in white, its niches filled with statuary, wrapped around this hall to the next landing. The decor was beautifully elegant, reflecting the taste of my wife, the former Viscountess Breckenridge.
“Should let me deliver it, guv,” Brewster said after I told him my errand.
“I doubt Mr. Denis will thank you. This is the task that will release me from my debt to him for saving my life.”
“Seems I did my share of the saving.” Brewster shoved his hands into the pockets of his square-cut coat. “’Tis one reason I got the sack.”
“He asks that I go to this Mr. Creasey and hand him the box,” I said. “That is all.”
“Huh. Creasey’s a right evil bloke. No good will come of it.”
“Well, I did not expect the errand to be mundane. Why would Denis send Mr. Creasey a chess piece?” I lifted the box, which I’d rewrapped in its paper. “A white queen?”
Brewster pursed his lips then shrugged. “No idea. Is it solid gold?”
“No, quite ordinary.”
“Then it could mean anything, guv. Right. We go, me one step behind you. You throw the box at Creasey, and then you run the other way. Understand?”
“I will hand it to him politely, or better still, leave it with whomever answers his door. I agree we should not linger.”
“Good.” Brewster sent me a doubtful glare, but he at last ceased arguing, and we were off.
It was a foul day, too cool for summer and too warm for winter, the fog hanging in thick patches that grew denser as we approached the river. I’d acquiesced to letting Hagen, my wife’s coachman, drive us in the family carriage. I did not relish the idea of rolling into the docklands with the viscount’s coat of arms blazoned on the coach’s door, but the carriage did move us quickly through the crush.
Mayfair had been quiet, as most families that leased houses there had retired to the country for the remainder of the year. As we traveled through Piccadilly to Haymarket and into parts of London where residents lived year-round, the traffic increased. Not all had the means to escape the hot, stinking London summers, and laborers were needed throughout the year. Commerce did not cease because Parliament wasn’t sitting and the haut ton had departed for more salubrious climes.
Hagen drove us along the Strand to Fleet Street and then around the bulk of St. Paul’s to Cheapside. From that busy thoroughfare we inched down lanes until we reached the Thames and its many wharves. I was alone inside the coach, but I imagined Brewster, sitting on a perch on the back, watching the teeming masses with a sour eye.
At London Bridge, Upper Thames Street became Lower Thames Street. London Bridge had occupied this spot since the Middle Ages, although about ten years before my birth, the last of the houses built upon it had been pulled down, and the bridge widened and shored up. No more did heads adorn pikes at its end, just as hangings were no longer a public spectacle at Tyburn. Men and women were executed behind the walls of Newgate, in private, with other prisoners for their audience.
The Custom House stood at the end of the row of docks, with its wide frontage facing the Thames. To the east, the street ended in the wall that surrounded the Tower of London.
Hagen halted in front of the Custom House, and we found Hill Lane, a narrow artery that led north. The street was too large for the carriage, so Brewster and I descended and made our way on foot.