The Sans Pareil Mystery by Karen Charlton

Author:Karen Charlton [Charlton, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: historical mystery
ISBN: 9781503947825
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2015-10-05T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

Lavender, Woods and Magistrate Read stared silently at the innocuous piece of paper on the desk. The longcase clock ticked gently in the background. Dusk was falling and the gas-lamp lighters would soon be out but Lavender could still hear the cries of the market vendors outside in the cold streets of Covent Garden, shouting out their wares. London never stopped. This was the time of the day when frugal housewives would arrive at the fruit and vegetable market in the hope of buying produce at reduced prices and the fruitiers and florists vied with each other for customers, desperate for a last few coppers.

Read and Woods were silent for a considerable time. They had a lot to think about, Lavender realised. They had been shocked when he told them about April Clare’s deception and how she had been masquerading as her dead sister for the last few days. However, when he explained how genuinely scared the woman had been and that he believed the kidnapping had been an attempt to retrieve the document that lay on the table before them, their irritation had quickly turned to concerned curiosity.

‘What has this woman got herself mixed up with?’ Read took off his wig, tossed it onto the desk and scratched his close-cropped head. He pointed an ink-stained finger from his other hand at the sheet of paper. ‘What do you think it is?’

‘I think it’s in code,’ Lavender said. ‘A code that gives the location of ships. The location of our naval fleet in the Indian Ocean, probably. I have no idea about how accurate it is – or how relevant.’

Read frowned. ‘If you’re right, then we have a grave situation before us.’

Beside the magistrate, Woods scratched his stubbly chin. The glow from the flickering oil lamp on Read’s desk illuminated the tired confusion on the faces of both men.

‘Miss Clare had put her play script into Captain Willoughby’s bureau?’ Read asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, it may simply be one of his old papers that had become mixed up with her script. It is not inconceivable that a naval captain might be thinking about navigation and jot down a list of the degrees of latitude and longitude.’

‘That’s what she thought, at first,’ Lavender said. ‘But I don’t think that Captain Willoughby wrote that list. He sailed away from England over a year ago and that list has been written since November.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because of the line drawn through the word “Victor”. HMS Victor was a French ship called the Iéna. We captured her from the French in 1808 and renamed her HMS Victor. But she’s no longer one of ours. The French recaptured her in November last year. I read about it in the news-sheets. One reporter likened her to an inconstant mistress because she was forever swapping from one master to another.’

‘We’re grateful for your prodigious reading and excellent memory, Stephen,’ Read said.

Lavender glanced up, suspecting sarcasm but the magistrate’s praise was genuine. It seemed their earlier disagreement had been forgotten in the light of this new and disturbing development.

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