When he looked at her, she said, “Riggs. The gentleman who owns this house is the Honorable Carlton Riggs.” She glanced past Stokes. “He comes into the shop sometimes to buy bonnets and gloves for Miss Walker.”
Stokes looked back at Miss Walker and raised a brow. She colored, but then nodded. “Yes. Carlton Riggs owns this house—he has for years, for longer than I’ve known him.”
Stokes inclined his head. “And where is Mr. Riggs now?”
Miss Walker blinked at him, then glanced at Barnaby. She clearly recognized him as one of the ton. “Well, he’s on holidays, isn’t he?” She looked back at Stokes. “It’s the off-season for town. He went up north to his family’s house three weeks ago.”
The cemetery that ran alongside the St. John’s Wood church was a dark and gloomy place at the best of times. At eleven o’clock on a foggy November night, the moldering monuments interspersed with old gnarled trees cast more than enough shadow to conceal two men.
Smythe stood under the biggest tree, in the middle of the plot, and watched Alert stroll casually, with the aura of an eccentric gentleman out to take the air, toward him.
He had to give the man points; he was cool under fire. As was their custom, Smythe had left a message with the bartender at the Crown and Anchor in Fleet Street, but this time his message had been rather more than his usual few words. He’d asked for an urgent and immediate meeting, and warned Alert in no uncertain terms against going to their usual place—the parlor in number 32, St. John’s Wood Terrace, a few blocks to the north—nominating the cemetery instead.
As he’d expected, Alert had been intelligent enough to heed his warning. As he’d also anticipated, he wasn’t happy about it.
Halting before Smythe, Alert snapped, “You’d better have a damned good reason for asking for this meeting.”
“I have,” Smythe growled.
Alert glanced across the cemetery. “And why the devil can’t we meet at the house?”
“Because the house, in fact the whole street, is crawling with rozzers just waiting for you and me to show our faces.”
Despite the poor light, Smythe sensed Alert’s start, but he didn’t immediately respond.
When he did, his voice was even, flat—deadly. “What happened?”
Smythe told him what he knew—that Grimsby’s school had been raided and they’d lost Grimsby, Wally, and five of the boys. Smythe was quietly furious on his own account—the opportunity to pull off a whole string of burglaries of the caliber Alert had described didn’t come around but once in a lifetime; quite aside from the money, he would have made his name, which would have kept him in good standing for the rest of his life. He was angry, but his fury was nothing compared to Alert’s.
Not that Alert did anything more than take two paces away and rest a fist on the edge of a gravestone. It was the rage that screamed in every line of his body, in the stiff, brittle tension that rode him, the violence he contained, that he battled to suppress, that set the very air—and Smythe’s instincts—quivering.
And set him thinking. Such fury suggested Alert was quite possibly desperate to have the buglaries done.
Which, in Smythe’s view, augered well. For him.
He couldn’t do the burglaries without the information Alert had thus far withheld, but perhaps Alert would now be more amenable to running the enterprise Smythe’s way.
“Do you have any idea who—” Fury vibrated through Alert’s voice; he cut himself off and drew a huge breath. “No. That doesn’t matter. We can’t allow ourselves to be distracted—”
Again he broke off. Swinging around, he took three strides in another direction, then halted, lifted his head and breathed deeply again, then he swung to face Smythe. “Yes, it does matter. Or might matter. Do you have any idea who or what brought the police down on Grimsby’s head?”
“Could’ve been anyone. Remember that notice? We were on borrowed time as it was.”
Alert grimaced. “I didn’t realize it might happen so fast. We only needed another week.” He fell to pacing again, but this time with less heat. “Were you there when they grabbed Grimsby?”
“For a bit. I didn’t hang around, especially as I had two of the boys with me. I got there just after the rozzers had gone in—I only stayed long enough to be certain what was happening. I left before they brought Grimsby out.”
Alert frowned. “Was there anyone else there with the police?”
“I didn’t see anyone…well, except for the lady from the Foundling House. I expect she was there for the boys.”
“Lady?” The man known as Alert halted. “Describe her.”
Smythe was observant; his quick description was enough to identify the lady. Who was indeed a lady. Penelope Ashford. Damn that meddling shrew! Her brother should have sent her to a convent years ago.
But Calverton hadn’t, which had left her free to interfere with his grand plan. To jeopardize it. He certainly wouldn’t put it past the infernal female to have been behind the raid on Grimsby’s school.
His earlier fury tugged at his mind, along with the fear that fueled it. He’d had another visit from his cent-per-cent, but this time, rather than catch him at one of his haunts, the damned usurer had come to the house! To his place of work!
