A Dangerous Madness Read Online Free PDF Page B

presence. No excuse to see the prisoner that would be believed.
    And what would she ask Bellingham anyway? If he knew Sheldrake? If Sheldrake had helped him carry out his plan?
    She turned to look for her carriage.
    There had been nowhere to stop on the crowded road outside the prison, and the driver had dropped her and told her he’d find a place further up Newgate Street to pull in.
    She could see it up ahead, and took a hesitant step toward it. She had not thought this through as she usually would before putting a plan into action, and as a result, she’d wasted her time.
    And yet… She turned back. The hard, stubborn knot in her chest that had driven her here would not loosen.
    She accepted she had no hope of seeing Bellingham, but she could watch the comings and goings of the prison and hope one of the men or women entering or leaving the narrow entrance would be familiar to her. Would offer her some lead.
    She had known Sheldrake since they were children, his father and hers had been first cousins.
    The two families had come together often, although she hadn’t understood as a child why her mother had not liked them, why their frequent visits caused arguments behind closed doors between her parents.
    With the benefit of hindsight and maturity, she could see how it would have grated on her mother’s nerves to be looked down on by Lady Sheldrake and her drunken, gambling-addicted husband, while they foisted their son under Phoebe’s nose and made unsubtle enquiries into her mother’s wealth.
    Phoebe wondered what her choices would have been if her mother had been alive when her father’s older brother had died and he’d become Sir Blanbury. Whether her mother would have ever allowed the betrothal her father had engineered to take place.
    Sheldrake himself had been slightly offensive, innocuous and dull. Even when they were younger and had played together, he had an annoying habit of underestimating her and condescending to her, but that fault was hardly unique among the men she knew.
    She had never, not once in all the years she had known him, suspected he had the nerve or the daring to get involved in something as huge as the assassination of the prime minister.
    A snide bet in his club’s books, or pushing a friend into a pond while out duck shooting, that was more his line.
    It shook her that he could hide so much from her. It made her doubt herself more than his small put-downs and absent-minded arm patting ever had.
    Frustration built in her.
    She refused to let this pass.
    She would get to the bottom of it, and she would understand what had driven the plump, selfish and self-centred man her father had manipulated her into accepting to involve himself in this affair.
    From behind her, the bells of St. Paul’s Cathedral tolled the hour, and she decided to give herself another half hour of watching. Any later, and her aunt would expect an explanation for her absence.
    Phoebe moved a little closer to the prison entrance and found a spot where she could stand that was out of the way of pedestrians.
    Then she settled in to watch.
    * * *
    John Bellingham sat calmly in his special cell, looking like a man taking his ease. That in itself set a bell ringing in James’s head.
    Bellingham’s jailer, Newman, stepped back when the door was opened and bowed to James for the fifth time.
    James fingered the guinea in his pocket as he gave the little man a nod in return.
    Newman had quick, beady eyes that missed nothing and James would have a private chat with him after he was done with Bellingham. The jailer would know exactly who had come and gone since Bellingham was brought here.
    “Good afternoon, sir.” James stepped into the cell.
    Bellingham rose from his chair, and gave a short bow. “Good afternoon.” He looked expectantly at James, waiting for an introduction, and then indicated the other chair beside the small writing desk.
    James sat and observed Bellingham, choosing to say nothing about who he was. He