Another thought lifted her head. Had Pike decided to take matters into his own hands without a warrant? Now that was far too likely. But surely he would not know that Carlston had gone to London?
She ran to the gig, found the brass foothold and climbed into the seat. ‘Edward Street,’ she said. ‘Pike’s house, quick.’ She gripped the handhold, realising the flaw in her plan. ‘Lud, I do not know the number.’
‘I do,’ the Duke said. He clicked his tongue, urging the grey into a wide turn. ‘If you recall, I paid him a visit after Union Street. After I saw you fight that creature so valiantly.’
Helen sent him a sidelong glance. He smiled, although he did not take his eyes from the road. He knew he was being very useful. And very charming.
Apart from a dog-leg curve around Parade Green and the Pavilion, it was almost a straight line from Stokes’s former lodgings to Pike’s house. The Duke barely slowed the grey from its canter across the town, drawing up to the small, neat house near the end of Edward Street in less than ten minutes. The dark windows were shuttered, only a night lamp lit above the stout front door.
Helen swung herself to the ground and regarded the ordinary scene with a growing sense of bafflement. But what had she expected? Candles ablaze as Pike and Stokes plotted Carlston’s demise?
‘Allow me to accompany you,’ the Duke said. ‘Pike is a difficult man, but he has already discovered he cannot disregard my rank.’
Helen inclined her head, although she was not sure she was in charge of the choice.
This time there was a knocker on the front door: a well-buffed brass piece in the shape of a fish. Helen rapped its tail against the back-plate, the sharp rat-a-tat-tat loud enough to wake those on the Steine.
She focused her hearing. Movement down in the basement and up on the first floor. Footsteps climbing steps and a sigh — young and very tired.
‘Someone is coming,’ she told the Duke. ‘A maid.’
‘You can hear her?’ Half of his face was lit by the lamp, the quizzical furrow of his brow giving him a rather saturnine expression.
She nodded, resisting the urge to list what the girl was wearing — flannel nightgown and felt slippers. That would be coming very close to vulgar display.
The door opened. A little face, slightly sleep-swollen, with thick plaits of brown hair, peered out, candle in hand. Blue flannel nightgown, Helen noted, with an ugly peach shawl hastily crossed over a thin bosom and tied at the waist.
‘Yes, sir?’ she whispered, bobbing into a curtsey.
‘Is Mr Stokes here?’ Helen asked.
‘No, sir.’ The girl’s eyes flicked up to the Duke, recognition coming with a blush. ‘Oh, Your Grace.’ She curtseyed again.
‘Is your master at home?’ the Duke asked.
‘No, Your Grace. Only my mistress. She’s abed. She’s not well.’ ‘Wake her,’ Helen said.
Both the Duke and the maid stared at her, taken aback by the abrupt and unseemly demand.
The Duke recovered first. ‘Well, girl, do as you are told.’
The maid curtseyed. An order seconded by a Duke was an order to be obeyed. She ushered them inside a small foyer, her candle stub lighting a thin staircase leading up into darkness and a long hall, the walls of which held no adornment except a narrow table with a white porcelain tray upon it for visiting cards. Helen drew in a lingering scent of decay: Mrs Pike’s disease, ingrained upon wood and stone.
Closing the door, the maid led the way into a small parlour room, the air still warm from the banked fire in the iron grate. Two heavy armchairs were positioned before the glowing embers, and a small worktable held a folded bedsheet that was in the process of being hemmed. The maid deftly lit three half-used candles on a sideboard with her own stub, their light bringing the rest of the room into gloomy definition: a small glass-fronted bookshelf, a larger table with four chairs, and a handsome workbox set upon turned wooden legs.
‘May I take your hat, Your Grace,’ she asked, bobbing again. ‘And yours, sir?’
They handed over their headwear. The girl curtseyed once more and, with hats and candle in hand, left to inform her mistress of her visitors.
The Duke walked across to the bookshelf and squinted at the spines. ‘The Pikes have a penchant for Scott.’
Does not everyone, Helen thought. She studied the workbox, wrinkling her nose at the stronger smell of putrefaction. A folded piece of embroidery showed Mrs Pike to be a fine needlewoman. A familiar colour of cardboard caught her eye. She leaned closer and smiled. Mrs Pike was also fond of Gunter’s jellies. Did Pike buy them for her? It was strange to think of him buying gifts for his wife and living in this sparse, homely space. Somehow it made him seem less vile.
She glanced across at the Duke. He had his hand over his mouth.
‘Can you smell it too?’ she asked.
He looked up from his scrutiny of the books. ‘Smell what?’
The creak of a stair turned both of them towards the door. Mrs Pike had rallied well under the circumstances. She wore a sweeping white house gown tied loosely over her yellow nightgown, both covered by a large green Norwich silk shawl. Her hair had been hastily bundled beneath a white pleated cap, and she held up a night candle in a tin holder, the soft light dragging at the corners of her mouth and deepening the lines upon her brow. She was clearly bemused by the lateness of their call, but still had the air of quiet dignity that Helen had seen in the Dunwicks’ supper room.
‘Your Grace,’ she said, walking sedately into the room and curtseying. She turned a polite face towards Helen.
‘Allow me to introduce Mr Amberley,’ the Duke said.
Helen bowed, her breath held. Would Mrs Pike recognise her as the lady she had met at the rout?
Apparently not. She curtseyed and turned back to the Duke. ‘How may I help you, Your Grace?’
Helen cleared her throat, forcing herself not to show revulsion at the smell of rancid meat. ‘I apologise for the intrusion, Mrs Pike. It is a matter of utmost urgency.’ She coughed again, trying to draw breath past the dank, overwhelming smell. The poor woman’s disease was clearly progressing if the stink was anything to go by. It was almost as strong as the foul odour in Lester’s cell. ‘We wish to know whether Mr Stokes has been —’
Helen stopped, the unexpected connection between Lester and Mrs Pike exploding into a sudden violent understanding that rocked her upon her feet. The rancid smell was not disease. It was the smell of an Unreclaimable. Sweet heaven above, Mrs Pike was an Unreclaimable Deceiver offspring.
‘Is something wrong, Mr Amberley?’ she asked.