madhouse Bride 18

 

Chapter 18

 

Anne was not taking much notice of the journey. She curled up in Julian’s arms in the makeshift bed on the floor when it was his turn to sleep, and was glad of the warmth. The weather was rather changeable, sometimes fine, but often the chilly, sullen rain to be expected of November, with more or less wind. Driving coats with mufflers over the ears and a good beaver were needed, and the horses needed rubbing down and currying every stop, as well as being given a meal of bran mash, heated on Abram Thomas’s charcoal brazier if there was nothing else. And a welcome hot drink for the travellers, too.

“We must thank him materially on our return,” said Anne.

“We must, indeed,” said Julian, gratefully sipping hot tea. As the horses needed to be rested in any case, there was no great rush to finish any drink or food that there was for the travellers on the mail. Stocking up on such food as raised pies, hard boiled eggs, bread, cheese, butter and paté at inns meant they might eat at leisure as they travelled; and with water-canteens fresh filled every stop, and ginger beer for the warmth of the ginger, and a drink without more than a nod to alcohol, they did very well.

“I shall be glad to get home, though,” said Anne. “It is very tiring.”

“I know, love,” said Julian, drowsily, he being even more tired from having driven for the last six hours. “And I’m sorry, I cannot stand up to salute your beauty even if you set off fire crackers under me.”

Anne snuggled, and accepted his efforts driving on her behalf as a token of his love.

 

 

oOoOo

 

Denver’s homecoming led to his wife setting up a screech at the state in which he returned, and found herself well slapped, and told to have a bath ready for him and clean clothes, and to throw away those he was wearing.

“And clean the house; it smells like nothing on earth!” declared Denver, who could discern the malodorous decay of the hidden oysters even more noxious than the smell he had brought home. Unfairly, he blamed his wife.

She cried a lot.

She cried a lot more when Denver, clean and salubrious, dressed in a nightshirt and banyan, discovered that she had purchased an Isabella fur muff and a diamond necklace on his account.

“And what the hell do you mean by being so spendthrift?” Denver demanded.

“It’s only the same as what you bought your mistress,” said Amelia Denver, sulkily.

“I told you before, I don’t have a mistress,” snapped Denver. “I don’t know where those letters came from. Any more than I know where the supposed letters from Switzerland came from, nor the damned mice, nor the copper pins to make the candles burn green. And the house stinks! Someone has it in for us.”

“I can’t see why pretending you have a mistress would be any kind of attack on you,” said Amelia.

“Because it put you out of temper with me, and has made you spendthrift,” snarled Denver.

“Well, you didn’t lose out, did you? Even though the plantation will lose money, you got other shares,” said Amelia.

A smile spread across Denver’s face.

“So I did,” he said. “Thank you for reminding me. I’ll go and see my broker first thing… damn, it’s Saturday tomorrow. First thing on Monday.”

“I take it you didn’t catch the baggage?” said Amelia.

“We ended up following some other dark girl being escorted by a blond gentleman to her aunt’s in York,” said Denver, with a scowl. “And I can’t accuse them of being a decoy; nothing to suggest that they were. I fear we shall have to kiss goodbye to Anne’s fortune.”

“You could spend the weekend at her house and see what loose monies there are,” suggested Amelia. “There’s a mort of silver plate if nothing else.”

Denver brightened.

“And I’ll have a better look for the key to the safe,” he said.

He retired to bed in a more mellow mood than had been his wont for a while.

 

oOoOo

 

 

Jilkins received Denver stolidly.

“There ain’t no point you interferritin’ about here, Mister Denver,” he said. “According to instructions, I’ve had anything her ladyship might need sent to Ravenscar.”

“You… you can’t do that!” said Denver.

“O’course I can,” said Jilkins. “Stand to reason; when a woman marries, all her worldly goods she thus endows to her husband.” He frowned. “Rightly speaking, sir, you have no right to be here; it belongs to Lord Ravenscar now.”

Denver was furious.

“I have a right to anything my sister owned,” he snapped.

“I think it would go to her daughter, not her brother,” opined Jilkins.

“You shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you,” said Denver. He was a big, intimidating man, and Jilkins was an old one who dared not get in a scuffle; but at least he was fairly sure there was nothing for Denver to find.

Denver was afraid there might not be anything left.

Still, perhaps they forgot something.

He started with the bedrooms.

It did not occur to him to start with the attics; which was just as well, since Jilkins had shifted everything of value to the attics in anticipation of Miss Anne wanting to choose what to leave here and what to take to her married life. Silver plate and the odd gold piece were hidden under old clothes in trunks, as were the late vicomtesse’s jewels.  Julian already had the contents of the safe, and Jilkins had searched diligently for any other caches of money or valuables. It gave the elderly butler great pleasure to see and hear Denver becoming more and more frustrated at his failure to find anything of value.

“Has the safe key come to light?” he demanded.

“I’m sorry sir; it’s not for me to have such responsibility,” said Jilkins.

Denver swore.

“Go and get me some brandy,” he said. “At least I can fill my cellars with some decent drink from my brother-in-law’s cellars.”

“I’m sorry, sir; his lordship took the best vintages,” said Jilkins.

This is to say that Jilkins loaded up the best wines and brandies in the elderly coach, well cushioned in rugs, and had sent them to Ravenscar house, in anticipation of his lordship being glad of a few pipes of decent vintage laid down, and which should have settled in time for his lordship and her ladyship to be home. Jilkins had accompanied the wine and discovered the intelligence that the young couple was heading for Gretna.

Denver went into the wine cellar, with a candle, to search.

He was discommoded to return to the top of the steps after an unsuccessful mission, and find himself locked in.

Jilkins had pushed the door to and bolted it, and sent the boy of all work to Bow Street to apprise them that there was a house-breaker who had intimidated him.

 

Denver was quite exhausted from hammering on the door when it was finally opened.

“What the devil do you mean by locking me in the cellar, you senile old coot?” he yammered.

“Now, then, sir, it is my dooty to take you in charge for trespass and breaking and entering, by means of intimidation,” said a large and burly officer of the law.

The large and burly officer was, in fact, Officer Peabody, who had disliked Denver on sight and was looking forward to having a legitimate reason to take him in charge.

“What? This is my niece’s house, I have every right to be here,” blustered Denver. “My brother-in-law died intestate, and he would have left me a consideration.”

“Nevertheless, as he did die intestate, the entire estate devolves upon his daughter, and thence to her husband,” said Peabody. “And you’ve previous in making free with the property of Lord Ravenscar; I hopes you returned his phaeton to him.”

“That stupid vehicle! It overturned and got broken,” said Denver. “I don’t see any point in a carriage which waggles about like the arse of a Covent Garden whore, he’s well shut of it.”

“Hmm, criminal damage on top of taking away and depriving,” said Peabody, noting it in his occurrence book. “And now trespass and attempted theft. You’ll be lucky to get away with being transported fourteen years if Ravenscar presses charges.”

“He won’t dare; I know too much about his wife,” said Denver.

“Attempted blackmail and coercion,” said Peabody, writing it down. “You can just come along with me, my lad.” He put handcuffs on the protesting Denver, and took him via Hackney carriage to Bow Street.

 

Denver was readily bailed without more than an ageing butler to swear a complaint, but was told to hold himself in readiness if his lordship wished to prefer charges. 

He was furious.

 

oOoOo

 

“Is that my phaeton?” asked Julian, coming to a halt before tackling Alconbury Hill from its north side. The gaily-painted vehicle lay desolately at the side of the road.

He stopped to examine the wreckage, and decided that there was no point even trying to have it fixed. So badly driven had it been that everything was awry.

“I’m glad I had a warning that your uncle had stolen my phaeton, or that would have been a nasty shock,” Julian remarked to Anne, before driving on. “I’d have been worried one of my people was trying to catch up.”

“It’s another score we owe him,” said Anne.

“It is indeed,” said Julian.

 

oOoOo

 

Monday morning dawned, and Thomas Denver awoke with the pleasurable thought that at least he would now get his hands on money from shares worth more than those for which he had exchanged them.

Mr. Denver joyfully took his shares back to Mr. Brabant, who looked at them in horror.

“Didn’t I tell you that the shares were in the Braithwaite Quarry?” he hissed.

“What’s wrong?” demanded Denver.

Mr. Brabant closed his eyes in pained contemplation of just how stupid some grown men could be.

“These are the Braidthwaite Quarries,” sighed Mr. Brabant, emphasising the spelling in its pronunciation. “The difference of a ‘d’ in the name makes a very great difference.  As in being altogether a different mining concern. They are quite worked out, and worthless.”

“But… but you said….”

“And you didn’t pay attention to what  I said,” snapped Mr. Brabant.

There was a difference between a client who was worth almost one hundred thousand pounds and one who was worth, from his own stupidity, around eighteen thousand pounds.

Denver stared.

“What… what does this mean?” he asked, looking haggard.

“It means you will have to retrench,” said Brabant. “From an income of around four thousand pounds a year, you will now have around seven hundred a year.”

“But… but I have a mortgage on my house!” said Denver. “I’ve been swindled!”

“Yes, you have,” said Brabant.

“I’ll sue you!” said Denver.

“Go ahead; you chose to make the wrong transaction after I had advised you,” said Brabant. “Caveat emptor, as they say; let the buyer beware. I suggest you go to Bow Street. I fancy they may be glad to lay their hands on Mr. Fredericks anyway.”

 

Denver took his story to Bow Street, and an officer was assigned to find and detain Mr. Fredericks, the River Police being alerted.

The address given to the Durrant’s Hotel turned out to be a false one; and not a single Mr. Fredericks could be found in any commercial directory.

The case was kept open, but Bow Street intimated that Mr. Denver was as likely to find a goose that laid golden eggs. Indeed, he was roughly questioned, as he was already a felon awaiting trial, and there was some belief this might be a scheme of his to throw blame on others.

He returned home crushed and broken.

“The muff and the necklace go back to the shops,” he snarled at his wife.

“But why?” she demanded.

“Because we are ruined!” cried Denver. “Those shares – they weren’t the right ones, he switched them, and they are worthless!”

This time it was Mrs. Denver doing the slapping.

“You and Wilcox, with your idea of getting hold of Anne’s fortune, and where has it got you? Ruined, a laughing-stock, and waiting to see whether Ravenscar is going to press charges!”

“I don’t understand how it happened,” said Denver, bewildered. “It was all going so well. Anne acted like a madwoman in front of the neighbours, and was confined, and the doctor was about to use supposed cures to torture her until she signed everything away, and then… pouf! Out of the blue she vanishes, and then Ravenscar comes looking for her, and then she is with him.”

“You’re an idiot,” said Amelia. “Five will get you ten that Ravenscar saw her in the madhouse and bribed someone to let him drive away with her, because he wanted either her, or her money. Or maybe she told him she had money to bribe him to marry her, rather than just possess her as a saleable madwoman.”

“But the prenuptial agreement!” said Denver.

“If I accept that Ravenscar can manage letters that read like the blowsiest whore in the land, then Ravenscar can manage to forge Bonnet’s signature,” snarled Amelia, with a moment of insight.

“I could challenge it!” said Denver.

“Not as they are now married; and there was a notice in the paper this morning,” said Amelia.

“He won’t drag a relative through the courts,” said Denver, hopefully.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” said Amelia. “If I was you, I’d flee to the continent.”