Page 76 of The Masterful Mr. Montague

Supplied with instructions in short order, Montague returned to the house and found Barnaby in the front hall; they went through the rooms upstairs, gathering up the bags they found in each room and filling them with whatever belongings they could find.

“The girls were maids from the country,” Montague told Barnaby when he rejoined him at the top of the stairs. Montague had four bags, two under his arms and one in each hand, while Barnaby carried three similar cases. As they started down the stairs, Montague continued, “They came to London looking for honest work. From what I gather, he—by which I believe they mean Walter Camberly—met them soon after they arrived and offered them employment. He then brought them here.”

Barnaby nodded. “I’d wager he hung around near the coaching inns. Easy enough to spot the wide-eyed innocents who’ve never been to town before.”

Reaching the hall, they paused, and Stokes joined them, Walter Camberly in tow.

Walter still looked stunned, still uncomprehending as, hands bound before him, propelled by a burly sergeant, he stumbled along.

When the sergeant halted Walter a pace away from Stokes, Montague fixed Walter with a witheringly condemnatory glare. “You disgusting excuse for a gentleman—you preyed on innocent girls for your own gain.”

“And,” Barnaby said, his tone equally hard, “you then murdered your own grandmother to hide your crimes.”

“Not to mention murdering your grandmother’s man-of-business, Mr. Runcorn, and her ladyship’s maid, Tilly Westcott,” Stokes said.

Walter’s face lost all color. His jaw dropped, hung open for several seconds, then his eyes bulged and he snapped his mouth shut. He looked at them, at their expressions, then vehemently shook his head. “No.” With every evidence of desperation, he raised his bound hands as if pleading his case. “No—I didn’t.”

His face graven, Stokes signaled to the sergeant. “Take him away.” As the sergeant shoved Walter on, Stokes added, “Just make sure you keep him well away from the others. No telling what they might do.”

“Aye, sir,” the sergeant replied, pushing Walter through the open doorway and onto the porch.

Twisting around to look back at them, desperation in every line of his face, Walter Camberly wailed, “I didn’t murder anyone! That wasn’t me!”

It was a long and busy night, but not one of them begrudged the effort.

Buoyed by triumph and the deep satisfaction of knowing they’d saved seven, at least, of Walter’s victims from violation and misery, the six intrepid investigators banded together to take care of all the issues arising from the evening’s raid.

Albemarle Street became their headquarters. Penelope, Griselda, and Violet returned there with the girls; Mostyn and the rest of the household rallied around, finding beds, comforting the girls with hot milk, then settling them to sleep. They put the girls in three bedrooms, two in each of two rooms and three in the other, so none of them would be alone.

Griselda descended the stairs with Penelope and Violet after they’d assured the girls that help would be forthcoming to find them honest work on the morrow, and then had bid them a good night. “I daresay tonight will be the first decent night’s rest they’ve had since they reached London.”

“Poor things.” Violet sighed. “What Walter did was simply unconscionable.”

“Indeed.” Penelope was unusually somber. “I don’t like to think about how many more he sold off over the last—what was it? Fourteen months?”

“Dwelling on the number won’t do any good, but,” Griselda said, “given they caught the brothel owners involved, and with any luck that will be all of them, then I suspect Stokes and his men will be closing down several such enterprises and freeing the girls shortly. Not that that will ameliorate the damage done, but at least they will be free again.”

Penelope halted, head tilting as she considered that prospect. Then she nodded and continued down the stairs. “Fingers crossed, but it may well be that because of Walter’s crimes, we might end up freeing many more girls than those he himself sent to hell.”

As matters transpired, it wasn’t going to be Stokes and his men who closed down the brothels. When he, Barnaby, and Montague finally returned to Albemarle Street, Stokes slumped in an armchair, accepted a glass of brandy from Barnaby, and answered Griselda’s eager question. “Not me, love, but my peers in Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and Coventry.” He sipped, sighed, then met the ladies’ encouraging gazes with a half smile. “Walter Camberly stumbled on a lucrative non-London market. The brothels in those lesser cities can’t keep enough girls—those that way inclined who have any sense move to London and the better pickings here. We snared nine brothel owners and their madams—the Chief’s in alt. Usually, it’s easy enough to catch the madams, but the owners . . . they are rarely to be found, and are even less easy to charge with any crime.

“This time”—with his glass, Stokes waved—“we have them all singing. And they’re all giving us the same song. Cromer—he was the man you took to be a manservant, but in fact he was more deeply involved in the racket, a full partner—was the connection. Through him, Walter Camberly approached the brothel keepers in those four cities and offered to sell them country girls—fresh, clean, unsullied country girls. Not being complete flats, Cromer and Camberly took the precaution of insisting they had to be paid in cash, and that the brothel owners themselves had to be present to take possession of the goods immediately after the auction.”

Penelope shuddered. “Evil—simply evil.” She looked at Stokes. “But how did Camberly find the girls?”

“It seems,” Barnaby said, “that Walter stumbled onto the value of being innocuous. According to him, ever since he was a boy he would occasionally loiter about the coaching inns simply because he liked watching the coaches and the horses and the travelers—he said he used to imagine running away, the usual adolescent dreams.” Barnaby paused to sip, then went on, “But as he grew older, and looked more mature, on and off over the last years, he would be asked by fresh-faced country maids just off the coaches for directions. Sometimes even recommendations as to where they might find work, or where they might stay.” Barnaby paused, then said, “Eventually, an evil scenario took root and blossomed in his brain.”

“It sounds like his parents keep him on a very tight rein.” Stokes knocked back the last of his brandy. “We haven’t formally interviewed him as yet. I wanted to let him stew through the night.” Stokes looked at Griselda, then Penelope. “What of the girls?”

“Thankfully, we got there in time for these seven. I’ve already sent a note around to Phoebe Deverell’s agency, and I received an immediate reply. The woman in charge—a Mrs. Quiverstone—wrote that she and the agency will be happy to take all seven girls in and keep them under their wing, assess and train them, and make sure they get appropriate positions.” Penelope leaned back in her chair. “So they are saved, safe, and well on the way to getting back their lives.”

“Indeed,” Violet said, “and from what the girls said, they do appreciate that, the horror of the last weeks aside, they might well end up in a better situation than they might have had Walter Camberly not interfered in their lives.” Violet smiled. “They are very resilient, which is all to the good.” She met Montague’s eyes. “They’re already looking forward, not back.”

Penelope heaved a tired, but clearly satisfied, sigh and locked gazes with Barnaby. “Excellent, excellent, and excellent! We”—she waved one hand, indicating the six of them—“have notched up a major success. All that remains is to confirm that Walter Camberly committed the three murders, and it’ll be time to celebrate.”

Stokes looked at Barnaby, then Montague, then stoically said, “There’s just one problem—Walter Camberly continues to insist that he hasn’t murdered anyone.”

Chapter 14