Adele Varens 9

 

Chapter 9

 

I dragged young Halliwell back to our rooms, and decanted him into a chair in my room.

I went and got Tony and Luke.

“This young idiot has only gone and lost a family heirloom,” I said. “And to Devonilll, who pledges it back if he can marry Miss Halliwell.”

“Why do I think that you have a plan, and that we aren’t going to like it?” said Tony.

I gave him an affectionate smile.

“Because you know me very well, and because you don’t stand in the way of my schemes,” I said.

Tony deflated.

He wanted to be chivalrous, but he knew I would not accept it.

“What do you want us to do?” he asked.

“We came early from Devonilll’s, and we have all four of us been playing whist for sultanas,” I said. “I have a jar of sultanas in my cupboard; I nibble them when doing Latin essays. Bribe the scout to go out for beer, and make sure that we’ve all been drinking.”

“And while we play your hand, you will be…?” asked Tony.

“Getting it back,” I said. “Let me have your laudanum, Luke.”

“Certainly, Ned,” said Luke. “Do we even want to know any details?”

“No,” I said.

“I’ll come with you, and see you inside,” said Tony.

I hesitated.

“Fine, we’ll be out getting the beer, and that’s our excuse to be out.”

I extracted from my hussif a reel of stout linen thread, and placed that in my pocket with Luke’s bottle of laudanum, which he has in case the pains in his knees and elbows are bad, from the lasting effects of his rheumatic fever. He tried to ignore it, but I could see that at times in the winter, I should have to forcibly physick him.

 

Of course, up pops Irontongue Wellington.

“Home early?” he asked.

“Oh, the play was flat,” I said. “We’re off to get some beer, to have an all-night whist session with young Halliwell as a fourth. Did you want a bottle or two, sir?”

“Oh, yes, bring me some stout,” he said, fishing in his pockets for the money for it.

We slid out.

 

“He’ll see you aren’t with me,” said Tony.

“You’ll tell him I went on ahead with the other bottles,” I said.

We both went into the pub – the Nag’s Head, I think it was, and I don’t think it ever shut – and got the beer and stout, so we were both remembered. We cached it in a culvert, and went round the back of Devonilll’s house.

“I am allowed to worry about you, Adele?” said Tony, plaintively.

“So long as you advise me exactly as you would advise Ned,” I said.

He nodded.

“I’ll try,” he agreed.

I winked at him, and kissed his cheek.

“For being a good friend,” I said.

I went up the wall like a monkey. It was a baroque sort of structure, and even at the back had a sufficiency of stonework to make it fairly easy.  There were also good, sturdy iron downpipes from the guttering. I swung into a linen room on the third floor, which had an open window, to get rid of the hot wetness of linen being finished off in its drying by being ironed. Something else the average burglar does not know enough about to realise. The advantages to a burglar of having been raised in a gentleman’s establishment are manifold.

All the maids were long in their beds, ready to get up to clean at the normal early hour, around the time the most hardened gamers were leaving. The waiters probably doubled as footmen, and they were occupied downstairs. I did a thorough reconnaissance of the third and second floor. The first floor probably contained Devonilll’s study, and offices, and accommodation for his accountant and chief croupiers. The second floor contained salons, but also the master bedroom.

Devonilll had a half-tester bed; which is to say, posts reaching high at the head end, and something of a canopy, with bed curtains caught back. I cannot see the point of such conceits myself; a full four-poster can at least have the draughts of a cold house shut out by the curtains, but the curtains of a half-tester can be for nothing but decoration. 

His room was richly appointed, and doubtless he had a valet who would assist him in undressing and putting him to bed. However, judging by the snores, that worthy was catching up on his sleep in the dressing-room whilst his master was busy with the fall of cards and dice downstairs.

I had water with me, and had already made myself comfortable; now, I scrambled up onto the half-tester to settle down for a long, tedious, and uncomfortable wait. The top was wood, and I would get stiff; but it had a carven front, and swags which hid me entirely from ground level. I tested this by checking that I could not see further down the door than the top of the first panel; in other words, the height of a tall man, and above his eye level.

I let myself doze.

 

I was instantly awake when the door opened. I kept my eyes shut, however, to avoid being too used to the light.

“George!” Devonilll yelled.

The snore snorted in a startled sort of way, and the valet came in.

“Can’t you sleep without getting rumpled?” demanded Devonilll.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the valet.

“Congratulate me, George; I’m going to marry into an earldom,” said Devonilll.

“Congratulations, sir,” said the valet.

“See this fine ring? It’s my ticket to a fortune, and to position too,” gloated Devonilll.

“Very fine, sir,” said George. There were various rustlings of clothes, George doing his job, brushing down the coat and trousers before hanging them tenderly up, a creak of wicker of a laundry basket for Devonilll’s soiled linen, and then the majority of the candles were snuffed, and George’s door shut discreetly. The light of the one remaining candle lay across the room from the bed, and I allowed myself a peep through half-open eyes. Devonilll was seated at a desk in his dressing-gown, writing a letter, which he signed, and sealed with a flourish.

Then, and only then did he discard his dressing-gown and get into bed, and snuffed the candle.

I gave him half an hour to get fully to sleep. There was enough ambient light to see the hands on my pocket watch, and the longer one is in the dark, the more one can see.

Besides, even in early November, the dawn would soon be upon us. I could hear the stealthy sounds of maids. I must be careful leaving.

I leaned over the tester, and unwound my linen thread. I could see the pale face of Devonilll below me, and waited for it to flinch involuntarily from the touch of the end of the thread. In his first, deep sleep, however, he should not wake. I let it drift to the corner of his mouth.

Then I got the bottle of laudanum, and used its dropper to deposit four drops slowly on the thread, running down, and into Devonilll’s mouth.

Laudanum acts fairly quickly, so I drew up my thread as soon as I was certain all the drops had run down, and gone to their proper destination.  Three would be enough, but some would be lost on the thread, and failing to go properly into his mouth.

I climbed down.

He murmured something incoherent.

I found his hand, and slid the ring from it.

I then went to the desk, and discovered the letter addressed to Edwin, Lord Halliwell.

I pocketed it.

Whatever was written would not be good.

 

I effected my exit from the same linen closet. I knew how I had come up, and I went down the same way. The sink there ran into a downpipe, and it was nice and sturdy, and set in an inside corner.

The lights were lit on the ground floor, and the curtains still closed; doubtless they would soon be opened, and the windows, too, to air the stuffy stale gaming room, stiff with tobacco smoke, sweat, and stale wine; stale urine, too, where men would piss in their seats rather than leave a game. How that was dealt with, I do not know; but presumably the chair seats came out readily to have their coverings and stuffing replaced daily. I can’t say I’d consider such inconveniences worthwhile, myself. Some asked for chamberpots to be brought; but not all.

Me, I am too fastidious to even want to consider it.

 

I hastened back to the college buildings in the pale grey predawn light, as the town was stirring. I had managed to get a room strategically overlooking a quiet street, not the quad, and I climbed a downpipe with which I was well-acquainted, into the communal lavatory of our floor. I had left a window open a crack before I left. I slid along to my room, and opened the door, to be stared at by three guilty looking faces.

“Honestly! Don’t look as if you are at mischief bent,” I said, shutting the door. “If I’d been one of the faculty, you should have claimed that I was relieving myself. It’s why I came in the lavatory window.”

Tony managed to laugh.

“Did you get it?” he asked.

I held up the ring.

“What do I owe you, Fairfax?” cried Halliwell, sobbing openly in relief.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just let me know how many rubbers I have won and lost, and the drift of the play. I want to read the letter Devonilll wrote to your father.”

I unsealed it and scanned the contents.

It contained nothing surprising.  Along the lines of having won the family ring in play, and expecting to marry into the family in order to avert the supposed disaster attached to such a loss. ‘I understand you have a charming and beautiful daughter of fifteen, whom it will suit me to marry,’ he had written.

I burned the letter in the cheerful fire in the grate.

“What did it say?” asked young Halliwell.

“Nothing you need to know,” I said. “Now, listen to me! You lost that damned bauble fairly publicly, but what happened was that Devonilll caught up with you after you left, and gave it back, knowing how much store you put in it; as you promised to redeem it. You can cover the stake you used it on?”

“I… yes, if I hock a few things,” said Halliwell.

“Good; do it, and write him a letter thanking him for letting him redeem your ring so swiftly, and have the money and the letter delivered today,” I said. “That way you are covered for it being less than a day, and also, he should sleep until at least midnight, and will be unable to repudiate it if you tell all the people you saw at play that he permitted you to redeem it, and that he had only been joking about keeping it. And send the damned thing home to your father, or take it home yourself over this weekend, and make a clean breast of it.”

“I… yes, I will. Thank you, Fairfax,” said Halliwell. “I don’t know what to say; you have been a true friend in need.”

“As a friend, I advise you to quit gambling. You’re no good at it,” I said. “You’ve even been losing in a friendly game of whist, unless you ate any sultanas you won.”

He gave a shy smile.

“I have been eating some,” he said.

“Well! Let us put them back in the jar, those remaining uneaten, and go virtuously to breakfast,” I said. “And then we can go back to bed for a few hours.”

We followed this plan, permitting the scout in to clean, and I vailed him for the extra mess.

Halliwell followed my advice with regards to his ring, as soon as he had snatched some sleep, and hurried off in his own curricle to see his father.

“Did you fancy a future earldom?” asked Tony, softly.

“Not in the least,” I said. “Especially not married to a slowtop like Halliwell. I’d probably murder him before the succession was secured.”

He sniggered.

“No, you’d put him in leading strings with a nursemaid,” he said.

“More than likely,” I agreed.  “I want to be wealthy, but I don’t want to marry wealth. I’d as soon work my way to it.  If I get married it will be to someone convivial, who is a friend.”

“Does Irontongue know?” Tony asked, abruptly.

“I’m not sure, but I think so,” I said. “He’s been a little odd in his manner towards me.”

“He’s cleverer than I am,” said Tony.

“And he also feels as if he has authority over me, and that, I could not stomach,” I said.

Tony nodded.

“He is an equal to you, but still cannot resist being in charge,” he said.

“Exactly,” I agreed. “I’d probably take it if I had no choice. But I do have a choice. And my choice for now is to do my degree.”

And with that, dear reader, he had to be content.