Rivals in the City (25 page)

The air smelled of mud and rain, and Mary breathed deeply of it. She’d not realized just how claustrophobic she found Mrs Thorold’s dark, silent museum of the unconscious until this moment. Mrs Thorold closed the door behind them, then pointed Mary down a narrow flight of stairs that took them below ground level. Mary remained still and unwilling. Nothing good could come of descending those steps.

“Come now, Miss Quinn,” said Mrs Thorold briskly. “Nothing to be afraid of. It’s one of the underground storage chambers. There are one or two more items I must retrieve before we are on our way.”

Mary couldn’t tear her gaze from the solid wooden door, the neat brickwork arch that framed it. Her every instinct resisted the idea. “If Angelica and I precede you down,” she said slowly, “there won’t be room for you to open the door.”

Mrs Thorold frowned, but soon saw that Mary was correct. “How thoughtful of you to observe that. I must confess that when I made my calculations for this evening’s entertainment, I failed to anticipate having a tourist along on the journey.” She considered her choices, gazing for a long moment at the beautiful, expressionless face of her daughter.

Mary held her breath. In this unscripted moment lay her only chance. Perhaps.

“Angelica,” said Mrs Thorold, “pray take these keys and unlock the door.”

Mary swallowed. It would have been much better had Mrs Thorold given Angelica the revolver, but that was too much to hope for. The present arrangement was still deadly, with the gun firmly in Mrs Thorold’s hands, but it might be the best opportunity she got.

After a brief hesitation, Angelica took the key ring from her mother’s upturned palm and descended the half-flight of steps to the locked door. As the lantern bobbed down into the stairwell with Angelica, Mary remained still but slid her gaze towards Mrs Thorold. It was more difficult to read her expression in this new degree of darkness, but Mary clearly saw her attention flit towards Angelica, checking on her progress. Good.

“Your turn, Miss Quinn,” said Mrs Thorold. Her parlour voice sat oddly with the gun she waved in Mary’s direction, but Mary was growing accustomed to the paradox. She turned to follow Angelica, who was apparently finding it difficult to manage both lantern and keys. One step, and then another. Each tread was slick with mud, moss, mildew. Mrs Thorold was directly behind her.

Mary was mid-stride, descending to the third step, when Angelica gasped and the keys fell to the ground with a surprisingly loud jingle. Here it was: the decisive moment. Mary pivoted on her left foot and twisted her body round, seizing the thick folds of Mrs Thorold’s skirt and pulling with all her might. Mrs Thorold’s feet lost purchase, she slipped onto her back and the gun fired, lodging a bullet high in the stonework of the museum’s exterior wall. Mary leapt onto Mrs Thorold’s prone form, scrabbling after the gun in the near-darkness.

Mrs Thorold kicked wildly, tangled in the cage of her crinoline. She seemed breathless and disoriented, but instinctively held tight to the gun. Mary caught her weapon hand and struck it hard against the stone steps. The gun discharged again, at close quarters this time, deafening them both and blasting brick-dust into their eyes and noses. Coughing and crying from the dust, Mary seized Mrs Thorold’s hand in both of hers and banged it a second time, then a third, against the stairs. She felt a sudden, sharp pain in her forearm and realized that Mrs Thorold was biting her. Mary raised her uninjured left elbow and did what she ought to have done earlier: she knocked Mrs Thorold unconscious with two decisive blows. At last, the gun clattered out of Mrs Thorold’s grasp and bumped its way down the steps. Mary snatched at it, but it was too dark: she could hear, but not see, its downward journey.

She abandoned the woman with a prayer that she remain unconscious and dived down the steps in search of the weapon. Whoever held it also held the future. But just as her fingers found its cold barrel, she felt it whisked from her grasp. She spun around and tried to stand, but was immediately pressed back by the glare of the lantern, so close she could feel its warmth. Its bright rays danced along the barrel of the gun, and she could smell the sharp warmth of hot metal from those two very recent bullet blasts. Mary swallowed.

“Sit,” said Angelica. Her voice shook, as did the revolver.

“Angelica, please,” said Mary, in her calmest tones. “Let me help you.”

“I said,
sit
!” It was a shriek now, the voice of a person confused, desperate, distraught. A person capable of almost anything.

Mary obeyed. As the lantern retreated and rose higher, Mary was able to see Angelica’s form and work out what she wanted: she was looking at her mother.

“Is she … dead?”

Mary’s tongue felt too large in her mouth. “No. Unconscious,” she said. Not for long, either.

Angelica appeared to fall into a trance. A minute passed, and then she began to mutter something under her breath. It was rapid and soft, but after several seconds, Mary caught it: she was asking, repeatedly,
What shall I do? What shall I do? What shall I do?
Still she remained motionless, however, staring down at her mother’s body.

Just as Mary thought she might risk movement, Angelica abruptly stumped back down the steps. She held her right arm stiff and the gun swung wildly in Mary’s general direction. Mary tried not to flinch. Angelica passed her and, putting down the lantern, opened the door she’d worked so hard to unlock. Its hinges groaned and the sweet aroma of damp rot floated out to envelop them. “In here.”

Mary blinked. “But … your mother?”

“Bring her in here.”

“I’ll need help.”

“I suspect you are stronger than you look.”

“Truly, I’ll have to drag her. She’s heavier than I.”

Angelica remained stone-faced. “Fine.”

Mary set to work. She had no idea what Angelica was thinking, feeling, planning. Likely Angelica herself didn’t, either. Mary clasped Mrs Thorold under the arms and lifted. That itself was manageable, but once she pivoted to descend the steps, she struggled against the dead weight of the larger woman’s body. She got stuck midway and said, “Angelica, you’ll have to help.”

Angelica stared at her. Her fingers tightened about the revolver.

“If it’s about the gun, you can put it down: I promise not to try to take it.” It was a daft thing to say and an even madder thing to promise, since Mary intended to keep her word. “But I’m going to drop her if you don’t help.” She paused, the slumped body growing heavier in her arms by the moment. “It’s up to you, of course.”

Angelica set down the lantern, tucked the gun into her handbag and grudgingly took her mother’s legs. Between them, they managed to hoist the unconscious body through the doorway without too many bumps and scrapes, and set it clumsily onto the floor. As soon as she was able, Angelica retrieved both lamp and weapon. She seemed calmer, with one in each hand.

For lack of anything better to do, Mary studied the underground room in which they found themselves. It was a low brick cavern, strongly reminiscent of the sewers beneath Buckingham Palace, which she and James had explored a number of months ago. The room in which they stood had two tunnel openings in addition to the door. One appeared to lead towards Great Russell Street, and the other seemed to run at a right angle to the first.

“What is this place?” asked Angelica. She sounded panicked, suspicious. Not at all the sort of person who ought to have her finger on the trigger of a revolver.

Mary tried to sound reassuring. “I believe this passageway is used to walk from the museum’s entrance to the Reading Room.”

Angelica shivered. “No loot to collect, then.”

“Not in this room.”

“So my mother lied to you about the reason for coming down here.” Both young women looked at Mrs Thorold’s body, sprawled on the floor. There was a bruise already forming on her temple.

“I suspect she has lied about a number of things,” said Mary, in studiously neutral tones.

“What do you think she planned to do down here?”

Mary took a deep breath. “I think she intended to kill me, and somehow frame me for the thefts.” Their gazes once again returned to Mrs Thorold.

“You don’t believe her promise not to shed blood?”

“As it happens, I do not.” Mary paused. “Do you?”

“I must, if I am still to consider myself her daughter.” It wasn’t a proper answer, and they both knew it. “As a dutiful child, I ought to carry out her plan,” said Angelica. “I don’t know how to frame you, of course, but I could still leave you here to take the blame.”

“If I were found alive, I would surely give evidence against you.” Mary kept her voice calm and quiet. “You would have to kill me, if you wanted me to take the blame.”

“So I would.” Angelica carefully lifted the revolver and pointed it at Mary. “Do you think I could kill a woman, Mary? Or a man, for that matter?”

Mary swallowed hard. “Only you know that, Angelica. But there is another choice open to you, at this time.”

This time the gun did not waver. “Really?”

“Yes. You could leave now. Go back to the Academy, pack your trunk and return to Vienna as you originally intended. Your mother is here, and I am here, but there is no reason for your name ever to be mentioned. Your choice this evening is not yet irrevocable.”

Angelica’s eyes widened. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she whispered. “All this time, I thought my fate was sealed.”

Mary watched the gun, watched her hands. “There will still be disgrace, of course; that is inevitable, no matter what happens tonight. But there will also still be music, work and a future.”

“I am accustomed to disgrace,” murmured Angelica.

“But I am not,” said a third voice, sudden and biting and cold. Mary and Angelica both jumped to face Mrs Thorold, who was even now raising herself slowly to hands and knees. “I expected no less of you, Miss Quinn, wheedling for your life. But you are a Thorold, Angelica, and you have made your choice. There is no turning back, at this point.”

Angelica nearly dropped the weapon, in her surprise, but managed to recover it. “Mamma!” She set the lantern down on the ground.

“Who else?” demanded Mrs Thorold, rising unsteadily to her feet. “Angelica, you may give me the gun.”

Angelica looked at her for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Mrs Thorold held out her hand, expectantly. And then, very slowly, her own hands shaking, Angelica raised the revolver. She pointed it at her mother. “Not yet, Mamma.”

Mrs Thorold froze, an expression of pure incredulity on her strongly marked features. “Don’t be absurd, Angelica. Give me the gun.” But her voice was hollowed of its usual command, and her pockmarks suddenly stood out on her chalk-white skin.

“Answer me first, Mamma. Were you planning to kill Miss Quinn?”

A sly look. “I gave you my word earlier, did I not, daughter?”

“So you did. But you have not answered my question.”

“And if I did think to leave Miss Quinn here? She was not part of my original plan; I cannot be held to account for variables such as this.”

“I thought as much,” muttered Angelica. “And the museum’s security staff that she asked about earlier: the Military Guard, the police and I think there was a third group?”

“The Fire Brigade,” said Mary, helpfully.

“Shut up,” snapped Angelica, but she kept the gun trained on her mother. “Answer the question, Mamma.”

“Oh, they’re all fit as fleas and jumping about London,” said Mrs Thorold lightly. “I give you my solemn word, they’re all fine.”

“Then why haven’t they roused to the sound of those two shots in the courtyard?”

“They’re not here,” replied Mrs Thorold. “There’s a tricky little operation going on this evening at the Bank of England, and they’re all buzzing about it like flies on a dunghill.”

Mary swallowed hard. So that was the reason for such a delay: Anne would have had to go all the way to the Bank, via Scotland Yard, to sound the alarm. Mary made a rapid mental calculation. Allowing for time to send policemen back to the museum, they ought to be here soon. Within the next half-hour, probably. Although at that point, they might be entirely too late.

Angelica seemed to calm a little. “And the domestic staff? The academics? They’ve no reason to be away. Why are they all still asleep?”

“They are alive, if somewhat indisposed. You saw that with your own eyes.”

“I asked you earlier if they were alive, and you said they were. What I ought to have asked – what I was too afraid to ask, at the time – is this: had you anything to do with their indisposition?”

Mrs Thorold adopted the look of someone trying to pacify an irrational child. “Angelica, my darling…” She took a step towards her daughter, but promptly froze when Angelica cocked the trigger. Fury and disbelief chased rapidly across her face.

“Answer me, Mamma.”

“You saw me making that batch of barley water. Did you see a poison bottle in my hands?”

Angelica’s voice was tight and small. “Not as such.”

“Well, then?”

Silence. It was bulky and almost palpable, a fourth presence in the room. Mother regarded daughter. Daughter stared at mother. Mary strained her ears, trying to hear something – anything – above the thundering of her pulse, but she could discern nothing with certainty. She might have heard a distant patter of footsteps; she might simply have wished for them.

Angelica took a deep breath, clearly trying to calm herself. She softened her grip on the revolver but did not lower its muzzle. “Then answer me this, Mamma: will all the museum staff be alive come morning?”

Mrs Thorold sighed. “We are wasting precious time, daughter. I shall answer all your questions fully and completely once we are embarked on our journey.”

“Yes or no, Mamma!” Angelica’s voice rose to a shriek. She braced the gun with two shaking hands. “Answer me!”

Mary tensed, ready to spring. That gun would fire at any moment, and there was no telling where.

Mrs Thorold’s features twisted into a smirk of fear, bravado, contempt. “No.”

A deafening explosion.

Mrs Thorold staggered, then launched herself towards Angelica. Mary’s stomach plummeted: the bullet had missed its mark. She leapt at Mrs Thorold’s back and all three women went tumbling, a tangle of elbows and crinolines and fury, the ground cold and gritty beneath them. Another discharge, but it sounded muffled, as though the revolver had been pointed directly into the dirt floor of the tunnel. How many bullets remained in the chamber? wondered Mary, as she clung grimly to Mrs Thorold’s neck and shoulders. She was the smaller woman by several inches and perhaps four stone, and she struggled to keep her grip in this strange embrace.