The Amorous Nightingale

    'The lady is in grave danger!' said Christopher angrily.

    Jonathan was unmoved. He crossed the room to open the door.

    'Then you'd better try to find her,' he said calmly.

Chapter Six

    'Why are you asking me all these questions about Harriet Gow?'

    'Idle curiosity.'

    'I know you better than that, Henry.'

    'The lady fascinates me.'

    'She fascinates every man with red blood in his veins,' said Killigrew, twitching a lecherous eyebrow, 'but that doesn't make them interrogate me like this.'

    Henry Redmayne dispensed his most charming smile. 'I ask purely in the spirit of friendship, Tom.'

    'Friendship with me - or with Harriet?'

    'Both, my dear fellow.'

    'You're an accomplished liar, I'll give you that.'

    'Then we have something in common.'

    Thomas Killigrew laughed. He was too old and too experienced to be easily taken in. Now in his mid-fifties, he was a man of medium height, running to fat and showing candid signs of a lifetime of sustained dissipation. Viewing the puffy face with its watery eyes and drooping moustache, Henry found it difficult to believe that he was looking at the same man as the one who had been painted almost thirty years earlier by no less an artist than Van Dyck, the premier choice of Charles I, the most single-minded connoisseur of portraiture in Europe. Thomas Killigrew had moved in high circles. As a Page to the King and Groom of the Bedchamber, he was entitled to call upon the artistry of a true master. Anthony Van Dyck's brush had been precise.

    Henry had seen the painting at Killigrew's house on a number of occasions. It showed a pale, slim, desolate young man in mourning over the death of his wife, Cecilia Crofts, one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting. A bare eighteen months of marriage had ended in tragedy. Attached to the sleeve of the bereaved man was a gold and silver cross engraved with the intertwined initials of his dead wife. Around Killigrew's other wrist was a black band from which Cecilia's wedding ring dangled dolefully. The widower's expression was a study in dignified suffering. It was impossible to look at the portrait without being moved. Even someone as cynical and indifferent as Henry Redmayne had been profoundly touched when he first laid eyes upon it.

    Van Dyck would paint a vastly different picture now. Tom Killigrew had lost his good looks in a steady flow of drink and debauchery. There had been hardship along the way. An unrepentant Royalist, he endured arrest, imprisonment and exile during the Civil War but he also contrived to find a second wife for himself, a rich lady whose wealth he enjoyed to the full and whose tolerance he stretched to the limit. The Restoration was the making of him, a chance to establish his primacy as a theatre manager, profiting, as he did, from his cordial relationship with the King and from his ability to judge the mood of his public in order to satisfy it time and again. Only one serious rival existed and Tom Killigrew had all but eclipsed him.

    They were in the manager's room at The King's Theatre. One eye closed, Killigrew scrutinised his visitor through the other and stroked his moustache like a favourite cat. There was a mocking note in his voice.

    'Do you wish to try again, Henry?' he said.

    'Try what?'

    'This foolish game of deception.'

    Henry mimed indignation. 'Would I deceive you, Tom?'

    'If you could get away with it.'

    'I simply brought you what I felt was an important message.'

    'Balderdash!'

    'Mrs Harriet Gow is unable to appear on stage at the moment. I felt that you should know that at once. I must say that your reaction has been singularly uncharacteristic.'

    'In what way?'

    'Any other man in receipt of such intelligence would be frothing at the mouth. To lose any of your actresses would be a sorry blow. When the missing lady is Harriet Gow, there is a whiff of disaster in the air.'

    'I've grown rather used to disaster,' said the other wearily.

    'Aren't you at least disturbed?'

    'Of course. Highly disturbed. Harriet was to have performed once more in The Maid's Tragedy tomorrow afternoon. I'll now be forced to rehearse someone else in her place.'

    'How can you be so calm about it?' asked Henry.

    'It's the calm after the storm, my friend. Had you been here an hour ago, you'd have caught me in mid-tempest.'

    'Why?'

    'That was when I first heard the news.'

    'You knew already? But how?'

    'By reading Harriet's letter.'

    Henry gulped. 'She wrote to you?'

    'That's what people usually do when they wish to send a letter. Hers was short but unequivocal. Sickness is forcing her to withdraw from London for a brief time.'

    'Sickness?'

    'No details were given.'

    'And the letter arrived an hour ago?'

    'Yes. Here at the theatre.'

    'Who brought it?'

    'I've no idea. It was left at the stage door for me.'

    'Are you sure that it was written by Harriet Gow?' pressed Henry. 'Could it not have been a clever forgery? Did you recognise her hand?'

    'Of course. It's unmistakable.'

    'Was there nothing else in the letter? No hint?'

    'Of what?'

    'No entreaty?'

    'None.'

    'No second message between the lines?'

    'Why should there be?'

    'Oh, I just wondered, Tom.' Henry's tone was offhand but his mind was racing. A new piece of evidence had suddenly come to light. 'I don't suppose that you have the missive here, by any chance?'

    'As it happens, I do.'

    'Where?'

    'It's in my pocket.'

    'Ah.'

    'And before you ask,' said Killigrew, anticipating his request, 'you may not view my private correspondence. Anything that passes between Harriet Gow and me is our business and nobody else's. Be assured of that. What you can do, Henry,' he continued, impaling his visitor with a piercing stare, 'is to tell me what brought you here in the first place. No lies, no evasions, no feeble excuses. What, in God's name, is going on? Why these questions? Why this subterfuge? Why come charging over to my theatre in order to apprise me of something I already knew?' He stood inches away from his visitor and barked at him. 'Well?'

    Henry shifted his feet. His mouth felt painfully dry.

    'Is that a flagon of wine I see on the table?' he murmured.

    Christopher Redmayne was in a quandary. The lonely ride back to Fetter Lane gave him the opportunity to review its full extent. Clucked from a lucrative commission to supervise the building of the house he had designed, he was asked to track down and safely retrieve an actress who had been kidnapped in violent circumstances and who might already be a long distance away from London by now. What little information he had at his disposal had come from a coachman who had been beaten senseless and who was still stunned by the assault. Christopher's only assistant was his brother, Henry, erratic at the best of times, nothing short of chaotic at the worst. Jonathan Bale, the constable selected by the King to aid him in his search, had refused even to take a serious interest in the case because of its moral implications. It was lowering. To all intents and purposes, Christopher was on his own.