James McGee - Ratcatcher

James Read placed his palms flat on the desk. He pushed himself to his feet. “My Lord Mandrake boarded a ship at Liverpool and took passage to the Americas. I’m afraid Runner Lightfoot returned empty-handed.”

Hawkwood didn’t believe what he was hearing. And he knew he still had to ask the obvious question. It wasn’t something he could put aside. “And the woman?”

“Ah, she is being held, I’m happy to say. And she’s under constant watch. Before he killed himself, Dalryde was questioned. He was kind enough to reveal Lee’s escape plans. We were able to board the Dutchman and impound her. The crew has been transferred to the hulks.”

“So,” Hawkwood said, “who the hell is she?”

Read frowned.

“I’m assuming,” Hawkwood said, “that she’s not really the Marquise de Varesne.”

“Ah,” Read nodded in understanding. “Well, you assume correctly. The lady’s name is Gabrielle Marceau, and she’s certainly no aristo-though there’s no doubt she played the part to perfection. She is, or rather was, a house servant.”

“ House servant?”

“To the real marquise. Which is how she was able to wear the mantle with such aplomb. It seems her family was employed on the Varesne estates for several generations. She became a companion to the marquis’s daughter. They were of a similar age and I understand she did bear an uncanny resemblance to the real Catherine. A resemblance which the Directory and latterly Bonaparte’s intelligence service used to full advantage.”

“And the real Catherine?”

James Read’s expression hardened. “Dead, I fear, along with her mother and father and, I gather, a younger brother. Madame Guillotine is no respecter of youth. The entire family was erased in the Terror. Which made it easier for Mademoiselle to assume the role. A part she’s been playing for some time with considerable success. My sources tell me she is highly regarded by her employers.”

“It’s a pity your sources didn’t tell you that a lot earlier,” Hawkwood said. “It would have saved us a deal of trouble.”

The Chief Magistrate nodded. “I’ll not disagree with you.”

“And no one was aware of the deception?”

“Anyone who might have known the family or discovered her secret is dead, killed during the purges. Either that or eliminated in the event a suspicion was raised. She was well protected. She was…is…one of their best agents. Her speciality was infiltrating the Royalist underground. She was able to provide Bonaparte’s intelligence service with names of Bourbon sympathizers, prior warnings of assassination attempts, invasion plans and so forth. She was ideally placed to co-ordinate Lee’s attack on Thetis.”

“And now we’ve got her.”

“Indeed,” Read said.

“So they’ll hang her, at least.”

But again, to Hawkwood’s astonishment, the magistrate shook his head.

“But it’s not just Lee she was involved with! The bitch killed two people! She shot the coachman and she stabbed Master Woodburn to death!”

The cold-blooded manner of the old man’s death had shaken Hawkwood more than he cared to admit. Lee had said he had not wanted to leave Hawkwood’s body at the warehouse as evidence. It had been his reason for taking Hawkwood on to the submersible. The woman, clearly, had not harboured the same degree of reservation. She had killed the clockmaker and left his corpse displayed for all to see.

It had been James Read who had suggested the motive behind her actions.

“I suspect the lady knew that Mandrake’s premises would be compromised anyway and that your presence there was not a random event. She probably felt that, with you in Lee’s hands, her mission was, to all intents and purposes, complete. Having Master Woodburn under her feet would hamper her movements, possibly hinder an escape. No, by her reasoning, Master Woodburn had become an inconvenience, something to be discarded at the earliest opportunity.”

The Chief Magistrate’s words made sense, terrible though they were. It came to Hawkwood then, the awful truth. The message that had been in the clockmaker’s eyes when he had boarded the submersible. It had been the moment when Josiah Woodburn had known that he, too, was under sentence of death. With Hawkwood dead, the old man was the only other witness to Mandrake’s treachery.

In an uncharacteristic gesture, James Read placed his hand on Hawkwood’s arm. “Do not reproach yourself. There was little you could have done.”

“I left him to die,” Hawkwood said.

“I suspect Master Woodburn knew you had no choice.” The Chief Magistrate sighed. “Our clockmaker was a very courageous gentleman.”

Hawkwood’s shock at the murder and the ease with which he had been duped had fuelled a rage and a grim determination to bring all those responsible to account, especially the woman.

It was with a leaden sense of guilt that he had raised himself from his sick bed and retraced his path to the house on the Strand. There had been no requirement for him to make the journey. James Read had already taken it upon himself to relay the news of Josiah Woodburn’s murder to the staff. The Chief Magistrate had not wanted to entrust the onerous responsibility to a subordinate. Hawkwood, however, had felt he owed it to the old man to pay his own respects. The knowledge that he had been unable to protect the clockmaker from a senseless act of brutality lay like a heavy weight upon his conscience and it wasn’t the Hobbs he dreaded facing, it was the old man’s granddaughter. He wondered if he would be able to look her in the eye without flinching.

The Hobbs had admitted Hawkwood to the house with the loss etched deeply into their worn faces, and he knew the moment he stepped over the threshold that the little girl was not there. The silence told him so, and he wasn’t sure if he was relieved or not.

“She’s with her aunt’s family in Sussex,” Mrs Hobbs told him. “Her uncle is a vicar. He has a small parish outside Rottingdean. They have a daughter of their own, the same age as Elizabeth. It was thought the right thing to do, while the family puts the master’s affairs in order.” The housekeeper’s face was as grey and drawn as her husband’s. “A terrible business, Officer Hawkwood, a terrible business. The people who did this will be punished, won’t they?”

“Yes,” Hawkwood had promised them. “If I have anything to do with it.”

At least that’s what he had assumed.

“She’s to be exchanged,” James Read said.

“ What? ”

“She’s Bonaparte’s most valued agent in Britain. We can use that to our advantage. It’s our intention to exchange her for British agents held in France. Overtures have been made. The French will release five of our men in exchange for her safe passage back to Calais. It’s an excellent trade.”

The Chief Magistrate’s face softened. “I know what you’re thinking, Hawkwood. We’re at war and many good men have died: the coachman, Officer Warlock, Master Woodburn…But there is a higher agenda at stake here. If this conflict is to be resolved, accommodations must be made, diplomatic channels must remain open. That agenda was severely compromised when Bonaparte commissioned Lee to attack Thetis. A line was crossed. A precedent set. That was why we had no compunction in placing French prisoners on board the ship. An eye for an eye, if you will. But I believe it was an aberration and the arrest of the woman has given us an opportunity to step back from the abyss. The situation is recoverable. With an exchange such as this, each side can be assured that dialogue is still an option. It is sensible, Hawkwood. Above all, it is civilized.”

Hawkwood tried to find words, but none were forthcoming. He wondered about the Chief Magistrate’s use of the word civilized. Had it been civilized, he wondered, to sacrifice the French prisoners or the imbecile Eli Gant? This was a side to James Read that was new to him. Beneath the Chief Magistrate’s cultured exterior, there existed a ruthlessness that would have done justice to some of the guerrilleros that Hawkwood had fought with in the Spanish mountains.