Under false colours

'They have not the value of your specimen, Captain, but they are more readily negotiable.'

'Indeed they make me the more apprehensive, though I confess to a fit of nerves when confronted with the pimp last night. He would have had rich pickings even if he undervalued the sale. You wish me to sign a receipt?'

Solomon shook his head. 'It is better there is no record of such a transaction, Captain. A nosy clerk, a ledger left open carelessly ...' Solomon shrugged and waved his hand, 'you understand?'

'I think so.' Drinkwater paused, then asked, 'The man Fagan, he took the bait well enough. Will he report to Talleyrand?'

Solomon nodded. 'Yes, and Fouche too, that is why your disguise was necessary. Fouche might have smelt a rat had we not dissembled, now he will bring the matter to the Emperor's notice if Talleyrand does not.'

'So Fouche is also betraying his master?'

Solomon smiled again, a curiously knowing smile, like an adult distantly watching the tantrums of children. 'Napoleon has taught them all that ambition knows no boundaries. Do you recall Aristotle's epigram on the state of mind of revolutionaries? That inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, but equals that they may be superior.'

'He had a point,' Drinkwater agreed. 'So Lord Dungarth concludes Napoleon himself ordered the attempt on his life in which he lost his leg, and that this was intended not merely to destroy his lordship and to damage our Secret Service, but to serve as a warning to Talleyrand and perhaps Fouche?'

Solomon shrugged, spreading his hands palms upwards. 'To discourage les autres, perhaps ... but you are inclined to doubt the assumption, yes?'

Drinkwater's mouth twisted in a wry expression. 'I am not convinced. We blame Napoleon as the head of the body, but the cause may be elsewhere. Mayhap the heart ...'

Solomon's intelligent eyes watched his guest, though he did not press the point. Drinkwater's grey eyes were introspective.

'Well,' Solomon broke in on Drinkwater's thoughts, 'it is true that men are not always moved by logic in these matters, Captain, though the French can generally be expected to employ reason more than most; but passions and desires, even distempers, are powerful motives in all human activities. Napoleon is, after all, a Corsican.'

Drinkwater gave a short laugh. 'A follower of the vendetta, yes! So Dungarth did go into France to arrange for some such 'accident' to befall the Emperor; well, well ...' Drinkwater recalled earlier attempts to dislodge Bonaparte. He remembered picking up the mysterious and half-mad Lord Camelford from a French fishing boat in the wake of the Pichegru conspiracy. A quid pro quo might also account for Dungarth's detached lack of vindictiveness.

'Who can say, Captain? I am not in his lordship's full confidence, but many things are possible among these shadows.'

The metaphor, intended by Solomon to turn the conversation away from speculation, failed in its purpose. Instead, it uncannily echoed Drinkwater's own theory, developed in the long months since he had first heard of the explosion of the fougasse beneath the earl's carriage.

'It is the shadow world to which I allude, Mr Solomon. That the Emperor himself, with all his preoccupations, made so clumsy and obvious an attack is unlikely, but perhaps it was done by someone wishing to incriminate Bonaparte.' He paused, catching Solomon's interest again. 'Like you, I flatter myself that I enjoy a measure of his lordship's esteem and confidence. Like you I see some corner of the affair. But unlike you here in London, I have been at a more personal risk, and if I am correct, the matter touches me.' Drinkwater caught the Jew's eyes. Solomon showed no reaction to the oblique and gentle goading. 'Did his lordship never mention a woman?'

Solomon's narrowed eyes betrayed the whetting of his interest. His stock in trade was not simply gold, nor bills of exchange, to say nothing of Northampton boots. Isaac Solomon traded as much in news, gossip and informed opinion; his was a business that turned on channels of intercourse denied to others, more obscure than those of diplomacy, but they were far more robust. They withstood the blasts of war, the impostures of envoys and the imposition of military frontiers with their douaniers and tariffs.

'You imply dux femina facti, Captain? That a woman was leader of the deed?'

Drinkwater smiled and nodded. 'Just so. 'Tis a theory, no more.' He did not admit that after the past week's almost unendurably squalid inactivity he felt himself electrified by the speed and stimulation of events overnight; nor that his theory, viewed objectively, was insubstantial as air. He too was as devoid of logic as Solomon's hypothetical protagonists. Besides, how did one explain to a man of Solomon's obvious intelligence, a hunch that had matured to conviction?

'Tell his lordship, when next you speak, that I am of the opinion that he fell victim to the malignance of a widow.'

Solomon raised his dark eyebrows. 'Whose widow?' he asked softly.

'The widow of Edouard Santhonax, Mr Solomon, née Hortense de Montholon; Dungarth is acquainted with the lady.' He held out his hand. 'Good day to you, sir. I am much obliged to you for your kindness and courtesy, and hope we meet again.'

They shook hands. The Jew's grip was firm and strong. Drinkwater felt a strange kinship with the man that was as hard to explain as it was to deny; rather like his belief that it had been Hortense Santhonax who had been influential in the placing of the infernal device beneath Dungarth's carriage, he thought.

'I will tell his lordship what you have said, Captain. He has never mentioned her in my hearing.'

'She was an emigrée we rescued after the revolution, but she had her head turned by Edouard Santhonax and soon afterwards turned her coat. She was in this country during the naval mutinies of 'ninety-seven. In a fit of weakness Lord Dungarth let her return to France, where she married. Her husband was one of the Emperor's personal aides-de-camp ... he fell in an action with the frigate Antigone.'

'Which was under your command?'

'Yes. That was just over two years ago. It was our fate to cross swords several times and I earned his wife's displeasure long before I made her a widow. So did Dungarth. The last I heard she was sharing Talleyrand's bed.'

Solomon nodded gravely, as though lodging the facts precisely in his astute mind. 'I will tell his lordship what you say.'

'Obliged sir. Now I must be off.'

Drinkwater was back in Davey's chandlery by noon. He still wore the borrowed hessian boots and the soiled waistcoat, but clean breeches, shirt and neckcloth combined with a dark blue coat with plain gilt buttons to proclaim him a shipmaster. Davey produced his valise from the room above and shook his head when asked if Fagan had been enquiring after Captain Waters.

'I saw him leave this morning,' Davey said, nodding in the direction of the pie shop opposite, 'but I ain't seen him since.'

'It don't surprise me,' said Drinkwater turning his attention lo another matter. 'There is something personal I would be obliged to you for attending to, something entirely unconnected with this affair. There is a woman next door in Mrs Hockley's establishment who hawks herself under the name of Zenobia ...'

Davey frowned with concern. 'I know her; the black-haired trull.'

'Just so, but 'tis a wig ...'

'Did ye make that discovery before or after you ...?'

'A fool could see it at pistol shot, Mr Davey!'

'You've saved yourself...'

'Job's Dock, I know it, but do you persuade her to get herself to a physician. She wants none of your paregoric elixir. Take her boy on as an apprentice and here is twenty pounds to see to the matter. You would oblige me greatly, Mr Davey.'

'You be careful of a soft heart in your line o' work, Cap'n. She will lose her living ...'

'She will lose her life else. Just oblige me, sir,' he said curtly.