A Measure of Menace (Kat Holloway Mysteries #7.5)

Chapter 3

T hese days when Daniel, a delivery man with thick dark hair and very blue eyes, visited at night, he greeted me with a soft but fiery kiss. He did so this night as well.

One day I’d succumb to him. Whether that surrender would be wise and beautiful or a very foolish action, I had not yet decided.

For now, I returned the kiss with warmth and led him into my kitchen.

I always held a dish back for Daniel in anticipation of his visits. Tonight, it was a portion of the bubble and squeak, which I’d topped with extra sausage. Daniel’s eyes widened appreciatively when I slid the plate in front of him at the table.

“Lord Clifford is here,” I said.

Daniel froze in the act of taking his first bite. He stared up at me then continued to masticate, his expression changing from consternation to blissful enjoyment.

He swallowed. “This is heaven, Kat.”

I pretended not to warm to his praise as I sat down across from him. “It is nought but cabbage and potatoes. For peasants to eat after a long day in the fields.”

“Lucky peasants, if you cooked it for them.” Daniel’s sincerity radiated. “Lord Clifford arrived, you say? That is interesting.”

“It is a devilish nuisance, you mean. And he’s gotten himself into a bit of bother, which is no amazing thing.”

As Daniel continued eating—really, he must starve himself all the day long the way he shoveled it in—I related Lord Clifford’s tale.

“I see he is as wily as ever,” Daniel said when I’d finished. He scraped up the last of the gravy with his fork. “Though not as wily as he believes, from what you say. I agree that his friend Jacoby was about to fleece Lord Clifford as much as he’d intended to fleece Mr. Dougherty.” He licked the fork clean.

“Great luck for Lord Clifford that the moneylender was killed.” I rose to fetch the kettle I’d set on the stove and carried it to the table. “Which is what the police will say.”

I poured a trickle of very hot water from the kettle into the teapot, letting the sound soothe me. I set the lid back on the teapot and returned the kettle to the stove.

“Plenty of people will benefit from Mobley the Moneylender being no more,” Daniel said as I reseated myself. “Not only Lord Clifford.”

“Which means anyone in London could have killed the man,” I said, discouraged.

Daniel shook his head. “Not anyone. This murderer would have to get past the toughs Mobley surrounded himself with, or be someone Mobley would trust. If someone desperate rushed past the ruffians, the murderer might have been killed as well.”

“And their body dropped into the Thames,” I finished. “In that case, we might never know who killed Mobley.”

“Unless the police interrogate said toughs. Though I imagine those Mobley employed have discreetly disappeared or at least found a new post.”

“If it was someone Mobley trusted, it might have been a friend,” I mused. “Or a brother or cousin. Or one of his own ruffians.”

“It is certainly worth looking into. I haven’t heard of Mobley, but I know men in the moneylending business. One of them might have some knowledge of what happened.”

Mobley’s rivals, Daniel meant. In the underworld, criminals kept themselves informed of one another’s actions. One had to be careful not to intrude on the wrong patch.

“Then there is Mr. Jacoby.” I lifted the teapot and refreshed our cups with the fragrant liquid. “He purportedly owns a shipping company. If Lord Clifford began to fuss about the money he now owed Mr. Mobley—and couldn’t pay back—perhaps Mr. Jacoby solved the problem for him.”

“A possibility,” Daniel conceded.

I’d had a notebook already open on the table before Daniel arrived, but it was one in which I’d been making notes on my recipes. Its pages were stained with sauce and smears of butter, but it was more precious to me than the secondhand cookbooks I’d returned to the housekeeper’s parlor.

My dear friend Joanna had given me a new notebook last Christmas, which I kept put away so it would not be dirtied. I now retrieved it from a drawer in the dresser, opening it to a blank page when I resumed my seat.

Mr. Mobley, I wrote across the top. “We need to find out more about Mobley. Was he married? Did he have children? I hope not, for the poor mites’ sakes. Who were his brothers and sisters? Friends? People he especially trusted?”

“I’ll go to the Strand in the morning, have a poke around,” Daniel offered.

“I rather hoped you’d be able to look at the police findings on the death. They must have already begun an investigation.”

“Mm.” Daniel rested his elbows on the table and lifted his teacup in both hands. “Any curiosity I betray will reach certain ears. I will try to have a glance at their files, if I can, but I believe I’ll learn more by going straight to Mobley’s shop.”

“By ‘certain ears,’ you mean Mr. Monaghan,” I said darkly.

Daniel took a noisy sip of tea and set down his cup. “He is keeping me on a short tether these days.” His voice was tight, betraying his frustration.

Monaghan was Daniel’s guv’nor at Scotland Yard, a man who had no title I could discern, but whom the other inspectors and superintendents walked softly around. Daniel was in thrall to him for a past transgression that Monaghan had taken personally.

I wasn’t certain which worried me more—Daniel investigating a moneylender and his criminal connections, or Mr. Monaghan sending Daniel into danger because Daniel had asked too many questions.

I let out a sigh. “I wish I did not worry about you so much.”

Daniel had the audacity to grin. “I rather like you worrying. It means you might care for me a bit.”

My face grew hot. I had not meant to admit such a truth. “I do care, you daft man. Why else would I have kept back the bubble and squeak for you? The rest of the staff and Lord Clifford devoured most of it. I went to great effort to hide it from them.”

“I see.” Daniel gazed at me so long my face heated further.

“Well,” I said briskly, trying to banish the troubling feelings inside me. “We have many tasks ahead of us. Where do we begin?”

I made my start in the morning by cooking breakfast for the ten staff in the house and Lord Clifford.

Before Daniel had departed, we’d made a possible list of suspects. I’d jotted these in my notebook, wishing to divide the lot between us for investigation. Daniel then said he’d take most of them, as it would be too dangerous for me to walk through London asking questions about a dead moneylender, which left me little to do.

At least, so Daniel supposed.

With the family away, I had a bit more freedom to come and go, even when it was not my day out, though I would not take too much advantage of that. I still had plenty of work to do, and I did not wish Mr. Davis or Mrs. Redfern to believe I was shirking my duties or deserting them.

Not that Mr. Davis didn’t spend long hours in his butler’s pantry reading newspapers, or that Mrs. Redfern didn’t use the time to write letters to every member of her family and all her acquaintance. I saw no difference in me occupying myself by walking about London, as long as I was home when needed.

I invented the excuse of visiting Covent Garden market to find the best comestibles for new dishes I wanted to attempt in the family’s absence. Tess declared stoutly that she could make a start on luncheon without me, so I headed out after breakfast in coat and hat, a basket on my arm.

Covent Garden was a long way from my true destination, but I began to walk that direction as I left the house in Mount Street. When I reached Regent Street, I found an omnibus heading east and climbed aboard, clutching my basket on my lap as the crowded omnibus trundled along to the Strand.

I decided to leave the moneylender and his ruffians to Daniel but let my curiosity take me farther east, past the Tower of London. I abandoned the omnibus in Fleet Street and took the underground, a thing I disliked doing, but it saved much walking, to emerge near the soaring walls of the Tower.

Beyond the Tower, I entered the docklands. Warehouses and a large railroad depot lined the street on which I walked, interspersed with music halls and gin houses—entertainment for the dockworkers and sailors when they left their duties. These men worked very hard, and I did not begrudge them their brief time of pleasure, but I thought that pouring gin down their throats was not the wisest course. My own husband had been a sailor on merchant ships, and gin had done him no good at all.

Wellclose Square lay a little way beyond the Royal Mint. Daniel, who was rife with historical details about London, had told me that this square had been the home of ships’ officers and well-heeled gentlefolk a few centuries ago. A church designed by the father of a famous actor and playwright, Colley Cibber, had stood at its center.

The expansion of the docklands had changed the face of the square over the years. Now almshouses filled the streets in spaces that didn’t have public houses and gin halls. The Sailors’ Home—where working sailors could board while in port—ran half the length of Wells Street, which flanked the square, and a house for sailors who’d become too enfeebled to labor sat on the other end of it. I wondered if those who lived in the first ever believed they’d finish up in the second.

Mr. Jacoby’s business sat halfway along the west side of the square. The sign over the door of the building, which looked no different to those surrounding it, proclaimed Jacoby and Sons, Shippers.

The door was unlocked, so I pushed my way inside. I found myself entering a narrow hallway with two doors on either side of it. One door held a thick lock but the other, which had the label Office tacked onto it, was ajar. I opened it and peered in.

“Good morning,” I called.

I received no reply. The office was dim and dusty, with a hardwood floor that needed scrubbing. One desk reposed in a corner, with only a blotter and an ink stand on top of it. Two clerks’ desks, which clerks would stand behind, faced the door, but no clerks were in sight.

I spied another door behind the large desk. I boldly marched to it, settled my basket firmly on my arm, and knocked.

I heard rustling and voices, mostly asking each other who the devil could be disturbing them. I retreated to the other side of the desk before a plump, middle-aged man yanked the door open. He stopped short when he saw me, as though expecting—or fearing—someone entirely different.

“Yes, madam?” he asked impatiently. “How can I help you?”

“This is a shipping company, is it not?” I inquired.

The man fixed me a look that said he did not approve of women charging into offices that were obviously the enclaves of men. “It is. What about it, madam?”

I put on a firm expression. “I would like to speak to Mr. Jacoby, please. I might have business for him.”

The man’s bushy brows climbed. He wasn’t much taller than me, and his soft limbs and belly gave him a round shape. His receding sandy-colored hair contributed to this overall form as did the fact that he was clean shaven, though his eyebrows were thick.

“ I am Mr. Jacoby. I very much doubt you have an appointment, Mrs.—”

“Davis.” I said the first name that popped into my head and hoped Mr. Davis would forgive me. Not that I would ever let him find out I’d appropriated his name for my purposes. “If I wanted to ship a quantity of woolens, what would I?—?”

I never found out whether Mr. Jacoby would view me as a potential client or throw me out, because at that moment, another man charged into the office behind me.

“Jacoby!” Lord Clifford shouted. “ Swindler . I thought we were friends, you swine.”

He hurtled around the desk and charged Mr. Jacoby, reaching out to close his hands around the other man’s thick neck.