The Hazard for Spies / 1st Chapters and Links

 Read below for the opening chapters. Find LINKS at the End.

Book Description

A young constable tracks treacherous traitors. A spinster hopes to find a killer. Will murder destroy their chance for love?

Conrad Hoppock left his village and the girl he secretly loved for a chance at a better livelihood. He joined the London constabulary and began working with the Bow Street Runners. Now he hunts the master spy stealing information for Bonapartist France. His search sends him undercover in a lawyer’s office.

When Phinney Darracott’s sister and brother-in-law died, their children whispered “murder”. She dismissed that claim as unreasonable terrors caused by the tragic loss. Yet after repeated burglaries and an arson that destroyed their home, Phinney believed the whispers. Now she wants justice for their murders.

The clues lead her to London. There, she disguises herself as a cleaning maid for the very law office where Conrad is disguised as a clerk. Phinney’s young niece Elise and the street urchin Vic secretly pursue a different tangle of clues to the murders.

In the night hours, when all is still, Phinney prowls for the evidence. Then she encounters Conrad.

And the lawyer at the center of the tangle of clues is shot dead while they watch from their hiding place.

Can Conrad discover the identity of the French mastermind? Will Phinney’s single-minded pursuit lead her into the murderer’s snare? Will the children be caught and sold into London’s underworld?

Will they discover the connection between past and present murders?

Or will two bullets allow the murderer and the French master spy to continue their work against the British government?

Opening Chapters

Chapter 1

A hand dropped on Vic’s shoulder. He stopped scratching his picks through the lock’s resisting tumblers.

The round moon cast her silvery eye over the alley. Soon she would drift beyond the narrow walkway

between the buildings. The silvery light would travel with her, leaving the alley dark except for the golden gleams peeking through the cracks of Elise’s shuttered lantern.

Her light hand lifted from his shoulder, and he returned to his work, figuring out the tumblers on the heavy lock safeguarding the warehouse side door.

She bent close, her breath a warm wisp across his cheek. “How much longer? That’s the third pass by the watchman.”

“Nearly there,” he lied. He didn’t know if he could get past this lock, rusted after long months in rain and cold. He fumbled for a heavier pick.

She huffed, and Vic knew she hadn’t believed him.

Times like this, the job chancy and the watchman vigilant, Vic missed the known of Liverpool. The escape routes, the likeliest hiding places, refuges from stout fists, the constable who would turn eyes elsewhere. He didn’t like London’s crowded buildings and sooty streets, the seething markets, the constant noise even in the deeps of night. He’d stay, though, till they found the information that Elise and her aunt Phinney hunted.

The strong wire pick Bessy worked past Hook and Fine to reach the last tumbler, stiff with rust. Vic gave a jerky twist. The tumbler resisted then “creached”, the word Ollie had taught him for the soft screech of metal giving way to his picks. As the lock swung from its shackle, he caught it, cold in his hand, rough with rust.

Elise snatched up the shuttered lantern. Her sharp elbow moved him aside. The door opened into darkness with a glow of light off to their left. That was street-side, where the front office would be. The light lured the unwary, but Vic knew better than to head for it, for the light meant watchmen resting between their patrols.

High windows admitted the moonlight. The silvery radiance might illuminate the night sky, but they would need stronger light to find their way through the warehouse. Stacked crates formed haphazard walls, and piled on and around them were boxes, trunks, and barrels, too many to count.

Elise glided over the bricked floor, smoothed by years of use. She didn’t open the lantern shutters, but light streamed around the metal plates, joined badly, repaired worse, but still better than candlelight that would signal a watchman. Cautious skittering started off to his left. Rats, the big London ones that stared before running to hide, considering attack rather than flight. A good mouser would have a battle against London rats.

She reached back, grabbed his coat, and hauled him inside. He shut the door gently.

“Lock?” she hissed.

“Pocket.”

She dragged him a few steps before Vic planted his feet. “Come on,” she demanded.

“Where to?” he retorted, keeping his voice equally low. “Can’t see nothing.”

“We’ll use the lantern upstairs. The windows are shuttered there.”

“Steps or ladder?” He didn’t like ladders. Rickety things weren’t kept in repair until someone fell and died.

Elise snorted, “Stairs. In the middle,” but she didn’t sound sure.

“This the right warehouse?” he questioned, not for the first time.

“Come on,” she ordered, and he followed because she still had his coat bunched in her fist.

Elise had explained her plan on the day after they arrived in London, almost ten days ago. Her aunt Phinney was off talking to her friend, the matron who offered them rooms in her mission. Hank had hared off to the kitchens, pretending to focus on fresh scones. Emissary to the house, he brought back all snippets of unusual information. In less than a day he had formed an instant friendship with the cook, a lean African woman that Vic had trouble understanding but who turned out food better than he’d ever had in his short life.

Drawing Vic to the double entry for the residence quarter of the mission, Elise sat him on the floor beneath the coats to lay out her plan. She claimed her father had had a second office where he kept important documents. She sketched a plan to find the building on a Church Garden Street near the river. They would break in at night then go through the documents until she found her father’s murderer.

Vic listened. He saw problems with the girl’s plan, not least that they were little more than children and they would be running the London streets when the criminals were about. He didn’t anticipate that she had the street name wrong. That problem took a week of cautious questions to discover it was Kirkgardie rather than Church Garden. Then they discovered the street ran a long ways beside the river. More days were lost walking and searching. More days passed before Elise spotted the blocky building with its unpainted plank walls warping in London’s moist air. “That’s it!” she cried then clapped her hand over her mouth.

No one had heard her. That was luck. They scouted round, counting windows, locating doors. Vic liked the narrow side door with its thick rusting lock, proof that few people paid any attention to the door. He didn’t like the watchmen patrolling the exterior. More men would be inside, that he knew, but her elation infected him. He scouted for a couple of days and a couple of evenings on his own, learning the men’s routines, before he agreed to break into the warehouse.

Neither of them mentioned anything to Phinney. They didn’t want the young woman to worry. She would be frantic if Elise or Hank went missing. Vic came up with a good story in case she questioned him. But Phinney hadn’t noticed. She’d been gone herself. “A job,” she told them at breakfast, “cleaning offices. We should pay Mrs. Stowbridge something for taking us in, giving us rooms and food. I’ll be working in law offices near the Old Bailey.”

Vic thought nothing of it.

Elise stared at her boiled egg like it turned her stomach. “Which lawyers?”

“You wouldn’t know them, dear.”

“Papa was a lawyer here in London before he moved to Liverpool, only a few months before he and Mama—died.”

Phinney bit into her scone. It crumbled, and she caught the pieces in an open hand. “Yes, Rosie wrote me. Peter was in London more than at home. Did you wish to go to his old office?”

“No. He closed that office.” Her blue eyes met Vic’s.

“I remember,” her aunt said, still chasing crumbs. “Rosie said that he had opened the office in Liverpool where his primary client was based. Everything else was stored at the house in Merrybush.” She sipped her tea. Lifting the quilted cozy, she picked up the teapot and offered to warm the children’s cups before re-filling hers.

“Which lawyers are in the building, Aunt Phinney?”

“I suppose you might know them, especially after our stay at Parton March. The ground floor is all clerks, of course, and reception. A large firm of barristers has the entire first floor. Clements, Pickard, and Quincy. Do you know that firm?” After Elise shook her head, Phinney set aside her teacup. She named other firms housed on the second floor. Her eyes tracked an invisible line. “Third floor. Phipps and LaVesque. Titterstone and Montjoy. Fulbright.”

Vic’s mind stopped at Titterstone and Montjoy. Those two were at Parton March when the murders and attempted murders had occurred and been solved. Titterstone was the mustached man who had ordered another man to kill Joe and Button. Joe had hired Vic to break into a locked office in Liverpool. An office from which Elise had taken a file.

And now he was sliding over the worn bricks, following Elise deeper into the warehouse, to break into her father’s office and read more files.

She walked fearlessly along a side aisle, and he gradually made out a flight of stairs leading up. The warehouse was like a huge cave, with moonlight filtering through windows higher than a second floor. Riverside, though, was a balcony running the building’s length. One steep flight of steps climbed to the balcony, and the silvery light revealed doors opening off the elevated walkway. The rooms that opened off the walk overlooked the Thames. Vic remembered those windows with their weathered shutters. None opened to admit good daylight.

Beneath the balcony were deeper shadows, more scratching rats. He didn’t want to go there. He tried to gauge how far along they were. The warehouse had one massive door opening to the street and a long dock to load cargo into a boat.

Vic slowed as they neared the stairs. “You sure?” he asked as the steps creaked under them. Even in the darkness the floor looked a long way down. “Don’t seem like the place for an office.”

Moonlight shone on her pale face, glinted in her sun-yellow hair. “I remembered.”

He wouldn’t argue with memory.

Elise was ten, two years younger than him. He didn’t know how she remembered something from when she was only eight. Hank was eight and couldn’t remember nothing unless his sister drilled him on it. Sitting in the dark double entry, coats brushing their heads, the floor cold under his rump, he had listened to her plan to find the warehouse, creep into her father’s old office, and discover the reason her parents were killed.

Vic didn’t point out that this office could be closed, the documents removed, the furniture sold in the two years since her parents’ deaths. That’s what had happened to her father’s office in Liverpool. He just agreed to help.

Yet he worried about the watchmen and the documents Elise planned to read. He worried about Phinney cleaning the offices of Titterstone and Montjoy, on the same hunt as her niece to find who had killed Peter and Rosie DeChambeaux.

And Joe and Button were now dead, because they broke into an office in Liverpool.

Killed by a man hired by the lawyer Titterstone.

 . ~ . ~ . ~ .

 Phinney tucked a dark tress back under the ruffled mobcap that topped her disguise as a cleaning maid.

Light glowed down the hall in a side office. While no one was present, someone obviously worked late. A clerk from the ground floor, she had guessed as she picked up crumbled paper that had missed the dustbin. She smoothed out the documents that had a clerk working into the small hours then folded them and tucked them into a pocket for later perusal.

The other offices needed only a cursory cleaning. She used the master key given her by Mr. Gregory to re-lock each office as she finished. “Never can be too careful, not with lawyers and their documents,” the older man had said, his esses whistling through a missing tooth. “You keep everything locked good and tight, Mrs. Coates.”

Phinney had nodded and accepted the key with a solemn promise to keep it on her person.

She didn’t grin at this unexpected luck until Mr. Gregory headed off to deal with a creaking shutter.

Her luck continued to hold. She had only the two top floors to clean while Mrs. Gregory took the bottom two. Mr. Gregory fixed problems, did the heavy work, and maintained the cellars with its large coal bin.

As she slipped into the offices of Titterstone & Montjoy, Solicitors, she gave a fleeting thought to the children, sleeping soundly at the mission. She had tucked up Hank then reminded Elise to put aside her reading before the downstairs clock struck the eighth hour. Bright blue eyes sparkling with mischief, her niece complained but acquiesced. Vic had a primer and pencil, working on the alphabet that Elise was trying to teach him.

Vic might not be family, but he formed part of their little family now, the three children and her, alone against the world.

Vic had warned them to flee from Liverpool. After trouble with press gangs, Phinney hadn’t hesitated to hustle them onto the first coach out of the city. The boy had then protected their journey to Parton March. Once they were settled, seemingly safe, Phinney had tried to leave the children at the estate. She hadn’t reached the neighboring village before she demanded the carter return her to the house. She couldn’t leave them with strangers, even if the strangers seemed trustworthy.

Now she stood in the offices of Titterstone & Montjoy, convinced the two upstanding attorneys were criminals.

She had lucked into the job as cleaner. Mr. Gregory accepted her disguise as a war widow desperate to support her three children.

At Parton March, she had avoided any interaction with the two lawyers, there to serve their wealthy client as he determined his heirs. Even with murder and attempted murder, she kept herself and the children closeted, well away from the family and guests. She knew of George Titterstone and Kennedy Montjoy from Rosie’s correspondence. Her sister poured out in a letter that Peter’s father had involved himself in another contretemps on a business venture. In resolving the issue, the son had fallen out with his father and severed the connection when they left London.

Phinney only vaguely remembered those months before her sister and brother-in-law were killed. Working as a governess of four children had consumed all her energies. She barely had a half-hour each day to herself. Her meals were taken with the children. Her employer required daily reports of the children’s progress and weekly proof of that progress. The older girl was a dreamer; the twin boys were pranksters who preferred fishing and roaming to Latin and ciphers, and the youngest girl would sneak to the kitchen for a sweet from the cook. She had tucked Rosie’s letter in her reticule and forgotten it—until she drew it out at the Lintons.

She shook herself mentally. Brown studies were an indulgence. She had offices to search.

A whisk over the surfaces with her duster, then she carried her lamp into Mr. Titterstone’s inner office. Last night she had searched Mr. Montjoy’s office. She wanted one document with Peter’s name or even his father’s, Pierre DeChambeaux. One document, to prove she was on the right track.

The kneehole desk had six drawers, three on each side. Mr. Titterstone had double-framed windows at his back. His partner had only one window and the smaller of the two offices. Mr. Montjoy’s window view, however, looked toward the park at the end of the block. On a fine day he would see treetops and catch glimpses of flowers. Mr. Titterstone overlooked the street and the red-bricked building across the way, yet he had an inner closet with a narrow bed, washbasin, and shelving for boxed documents.

George Titterstone also worked more cases than his partner. A dozen labelled boxes were stacked on shelves to one side of the room. Phinney eyed those case files and wondered how long a perusal of each would take. She might need several nights to work through all of the files.

Tucking her cleaning basket with rags and wax polish beside the shelves, she approached the desk, choosing Mr. Titterstone’s side. She quickly scanned the stacked ledgers and the documents inside folders, careful not to disarrange them. Her father hadn’t liked any of his papers moved, especially when he prepared a sermon. Phinney had picked up items, dusted underneath, then replaced them, all without the Rev. Darracott spotting the removals. Finding nothing, she tugged on the center drawer. It didn’t budge. Slipping fingers under her mobcap, she withdrew two hair picks and set to work on the simple lock, mentally thanking Vic for his lessons.

When the clock in the outer office chimed the half-hour, Phinney climbed from her aching knees and glared at the desk. Nothing. Not a single paper with the name DeChambeaux. Only a couple of files had dates preceding the carriage accident, but those were innocuous statements about an estate called Ridings in Little Houghton, inherited by Sir Charles Audley from his uncle. Mr. Titterstone had jotted a half-page of notes about the classics scholar who was decoding Egyptian hieroglyphs from the Rosetta Stone. Three words in a different hand appended the note: Poutaine, cipher, key.

She slipped the note back into the file box, telling herself the intervening years would have resolved any issue. Yet those three words niggled at her as she searched the other drawers. Hands on her hips, she considered retrieving it, yet even as she reached for the drawer, the door to the outer office opened. Hurriedly, she grabbed up a cleaning cloth.

When Titterstone’s office door opened, Phinney stayed crouched beside her basket and pretended to dust the bottom shelf.

“Here. Who are you?”

She straightened. Without looking in the man’s direction, she bobbed a curtsey. “The cleaner, sir.”

“I hadn’t—you are here alone.”

Phinney stiffened. “The Gregorys are below, sir,” she snipped. “This floor is my duty. And the one below.”

“It can’t be.”

At the confusing comment, Phinney chanced a look to see a tall, broad-shouldered man, black hair and pale skin, blue eyes so pale they looked like tinted glass. Her mouth dropped open.

Conrad Hoppock laughed. “It is you.”

 Chapter 2

Life kept surprising Conrad. Phinney Darracott in a maid’s mobcap that hid her dark curls was a welcome surprise, one of the few. Her piquant features had the same archness as nine years before. An engulfing apron hid her slender frame. While his star had been ascendant, though, hers had plummeted after her father’s death. Governess, he remembered. Now a maid cleaning offices?

Conrad wiped away his grin. “Josephine Elizabeth Darracott, I never expected to see you.”

“Again? I think I heard an again.”

His lips twitched, wanting to stretch wide. Phinney might be down, but she remained plucky. “Never I said. And meant it.”

“You expected I would remain in Brize Norton until I dried up like a wheat crop left unharvested, all brown and useless.”

“No, Phinney. No!” Rather than impress this girl who had once fascinated him, he had offended her. “I returned to Brize Norton a couple of years ago. My condolences on the deaths of your parents.”

Her mobile mouth twisted. “I was gone by then, working as a governess until my sister—.” She stopped. Her visible swallow hurt his own throat.

“I heard that, too. Your sister had a child, didn’t she?”

“Two. Elise and Henry. Hank, we call him.”

“They’re with you?”

“Of course!” Her gaze dropped to the rag in her hand then swept around the office. “You work for Messieurs Titterstone and Montjoy?”

He hesitated only a second then told the official lie. “I clerk for them. I’m working on a brief now.”

“That’s your lamp burning in the side room down the hall?”

“Yes.” He didn’t know what else to say. “Are you—?”

Voices came from the hallway, muffled by the outer door he’d had the sense to shut.

“Oh, no,” she whispered.

A key scraped in the lock.

He quickly pressed the inner door nearly shut then grabbed Phinney’s arm and her lamp. She squeaked as he hustled her to the closet. “Open it.”

She obeyed, as eager as he to hide.

He crowded behind her into the closet and yanked the door shut as the men’s voices came louder. They had entered the anteroom. Conrad blew out the lantern and set it away from the door.

At the plunge into darkness, Phinney squeaked again and grabbed his arm. He clapped a hand over her mouth as light gleamed along the cracked door. He shifted a little, hoping for a view of the room.

Phinney staggered and grabbed his forearm. She pushed at his smothering hand. “Sh-h,” he warned before he removed it. The gleam of light illuminated her pale face. Those large expressive eyes were closed. Her lips were parted. He wanted to kiss her—a stupid wish, really, with men coming into Titterstone’s office. Yet that old desire pushed him. Well aware of the distance between a plow boy and the vicar’s daughter, his fifteen-year-old self had controlled the yearning. He didn’t want the vicar’s cane planted across his back. The desire’s resurgence didn’t surprise him—but his job demanded he discover whom Titterstone met after-hours. That was as much a deterrent as the vicar’s macassar cane.

He looked away from temptation and peered through the thin crack between door and jamb. He could see Titterstone’s desk. The man must have brought in a candle, for the light jumped around as if a breeze wisped over the flame.

“You threw your lot in with the wrong people,” the lawyer said. A creak came, and Conrad saw him turn his chair and sit.

Grey superfine wool entered his line of sight. “I never expected Napoleon to lose.” A man’s sleeve. Not as tall as him, for the shoulder was well below Conrad’s eye-level.

“What do you want, sir? Do take that chair. How may I assist you? What are your needs?”

“This isn’t a need; it’s a necessity. I must return to my life here in England.”

The man moved. Conrad saw the desk with its stack of ledgers, the array of files, loose papers strewn over the blotter. The inkwell gleamed like champagne in the shifting candlelight.

“Sir, how is your return to England possible? Too many people know you. The Westover family, especially Lord Alex who once counted you a dear friend. Lord Costell, who has recently inherited. The Wilsons, the Armitage brothers. These men move throughout society.”

“They continue to drink the elixir of privilege while I inhabit drafty garrets and rat-infested apartments. I weary of being the foreigner that everyone can identify and of whom they attempt to take advantage. That life is no longer for me. I will return here to live.”

“I do not advise it.”

“Come, Titterstone, advice is not what I seek. Possibilities are. I appreciate your and Mr. Montjoy’s efforts to keep me from being tried in absentia. On my return I need not live in the cream of society. I can inhabit the shadows ... as my uncle does.”

Conrad sifted through the snippets of information, trying to divine the man’s identity. Alex Westover had a friend named James Costell. The brothers Michael and Lucas Armitage walked the fringes of society, accepted in the tonniest ballrooms but also familiar with the gaming dens and streets of blue ruin. They worked for London’s spycatcher, Sir Roger Nazenby. That name wasn’t widely known.

This man—who was he? When had he fled England? What crime had sent him to the Continent?

“My uncle does very well for himself,” the man said, and Conrad realized that he had missed Titterstone’s reply. Phinney stood statue-still against him, barely breathing, her fingers still clutching his arm.

The chair creaked. Titterstone’s arm rested on the blotter.

Phinney angled her head, trying to see more. Conrad tightened his hold, wanting to draw her away from the door.

“You would be content with that shadowy life?” The lawyer played with a letter knife, lifting it to turn and slide through his fingers only to turn it again and let the tip land in the blotter. “You should consult the Boss, not me.”

The Boss? Did he mean the Boss of London? The man who ruled the criminal underworld?

Talk of a shadowy life now made sense.

Another creak, a different sound than the lawyer’s chair. “The thing is, Titterstone, I owe my uncle a great debt. Not a monetary one. A debt that is much more difficult to repay. He will not support my plans until I repay him. He wants everything equaled out.”

“I am well acquainted with the Boss of London and his idea of equaling debts. I am not, however, in the business of intangible usury, Mr. Malbury. I will work with you on tangible debts.”

“Intangible usury? You sound like the lawyer you are, Titterstone. I do not expect you to advance me any funds. Neither does my uncle. He definitely does not need more money.”

“I do not think—.”

“My father is in ill health.” The younger man rode over the lawyer’s protest, calm words that still plowed ahead like an ox working up a muddy hill. “My uncle’s message to me, notifying me of his steady decline, prompted my return. At the appropriate time, this office can ensure the estate’s funds will be funneled to me. You and Montjoy do still retain my letter of intent to that effect.” He paused, and Titterstone must have nodded, for he continued, “At the appropriate time, I will provide this office with my new location and my new name. Neither is yet decided. I am not the imbecile you believe that I am.”

After he had turned the letter opener several times, Titterstone cleared his throat. “Your father may recover.”

“Not according to my uncle.”

“Have you seen him?”

“My father? Of course not. White Hall has agents watching their residence, as if they think I am foolish enough to walk brazenly to the front door. Three years since my departure, and they still watch the house.”

“I meant, have you seen your uncle? Have you spoken with him about your return?”

“Ah, therein lies the rub, doesn’t it? You and Montjoy have attempted to conceal your connection to Boss Malbury and other nefarious rulers, such as the master of Liverpool.”

Titterstone dropped the letter opener. “I have had no contact—.”

“My uncle knows that you were in Liverpool a few weeks ago. He knows the reason. He is curious about the contents of that file taken from a certain solicitor’s office near the waterfront. A file that he knows you were so intent on concealing that you required Stevens to kill the two men who broke into that office for you. Joe and Button. Or did you bother to learn their names?”

Phinney jerked and began trembling.

His arm still around her shoulders, Conrad braced her against his chest. He stared at the mobcap ruffle that blocked his view of her face. What does she know about Liverpool and two murdered men? Information about those murders would please Chief Constable Evans. Not only could Titterstone be connected to murders by the assassin Stevens, but the theft of this file offered another avenue of inquiry. Yet Phinney apparently knew something about the theft and those two murders. His chief would want her interrogated. Conrad didn’t want to.

I’ve just found her. I’ll lose her again.

“What does Boss Malbury want?” the lawyer demanded. Rather than be quelled by Malbury’s information, he had stubbed up like an ox that refused to plow another furrow. “What is this intangible usury he demands?"

LINKS

Worldwide Distribution through Books to Read, ebook only

Paperback and ebook from Amazon

View the Trailer:  https://youtu.be/YrnFtNhzwQs

Interested in the whole Subseries about Tracking French Spies?

1. A Game of Secrets > the book description, links to purchase, and the opening of the novel at this blogpost
2. A Game of Spies > 1st chapters with our heroine and hero, the book description, and links to purchase in a blogpost
3. The Dangers for Spies > 1st chapters, links to purchase, and the book description, all in a blogpost
4. The Key for Spies > a loosely-connected novel, for this one is based in northern Spain rather than Regency England. More of a stand-alone, this story of a British officer and a lady leading Spanish guerrillas against French occupation is more about warfare than the ballrooms of high society London. The opening, a book description, and links to purchase at this blogpost
5. The Hazard for Spies (this blogpost) ~ the conclusion to the subseries.

Want to Read More with Vic and his Friends?

• The Hazard of Secrets, which introduces Vic, Elise, and Hank and a bit with Phinney: Our main characters Clarey and Jem feature in this blogpost from earlier this year. (Links included!)