Rivals in the City (27 page)

James nodded. “Very likely. Museum records show that she was taken into employment about a month ago. It would be interesting to chart her time at the museum against recurring illnesses amongst its members of staff.”

Mary was silent for a moment. “How many have died, thus far?”

“Nine, with more likely to succumb.”

“Arsenic is a bit of a cliché,” mused Mary. “So many of the most infamous poisoners are women. I wonder why she chose it?”

“Perhaps because it’s relatively subtle. She may even have dosed herself with a small amount, on a couple of occasions, to produce convincing symptoms of illness. It would certainly throw others off her trail.”

“And it’s still easy to procure, even with the new restrictions.”

“Yes. The police are now at work searching for her trail of purchases.”

“Everything else seems straightforward enough,” said Mary. “After all, she was caught in the act with a bag full of loot.”

“The dictionary definition of ‘red-handed’. Although what’s distinctly complicated is Angelica’s role in the affair. And how is Angelica, do you know?”

Mary nodded. “She wasn’t shot, as I’d feared. In hindsight, I think Mrs Thorold must have struck her unconscious with the butt of the revolver, which then discharged into the ground. She is recovering, although it was a nasty blow to the head. She’s still feeling very shaky.”

“Where is she?”

“At the girls’ school in Acacia Road.” Mary paused. “I believe you met the head teacher, Miss Treleaven.”

“Yes.” James hesitated. “For now, let’s continue talking about Angelica. Did she really seek to prevent her mother’s crimes?”

“It is her current story, and I confess to planting its seed that evening. It goes like this: Angelica initially sought a reunion with her mother for all the usual reasons – last remaining family member, seeking her mother’s blessing for her new life as a music student, that sort of thing. Then, when Angelica first realized that her mother was up to something criminal, she knew she couldn’t go through with it. But she pretended to participate, in the hope that she could dissuade her mother from wrongdoing and prevent harm to others. And when Mrs Thorold threatened my safety, Angelica was forced to act against her.” Mary smiled and made an equivocal gesture. “It’s fairly close to the truth. Not bad, I think, considering that Angelica suffered a significant injury and thus hasn’t had a great deal of time to work out a coherent story.”

“If that narrative is so close to the truth, why bother with fiction? Not for the sake of mere moral posturing.” James added hastily, “Only it’s more difficult to keep track of a story. Besides that, the truth won’t land Angelica in jail.”

“Angelica thinks it necessary to protect her reputation for the sake of her future career as a musician. There might be a certain sensational value in having been a burglar, however briefly, but nobody would invite her into their homes to give a concert, after that. And,” added Mary, “I don’t know precisely what the truth is, and I doubt Angelica does, either. Motives are murky, confusing things. Once you add family loyalties and a sense of obligation, they are prone to change minute by minute. Perhaps Angelica seriously embraced the prospect of a life of mother-daughter crime; perhaps she was only playing at it, waiting to see what happened; perhaps she genuinely hoped to dissuade her mother from the thefts. I suspect all those theories are true, depending on the moment in question.”

James nodded, and they walked a turn of the square in silence. “Is she off for Vienna, then?”

“Scotland Yard have asked her to delay her departure by a fortnight, in case of further questions. But yes, she’ll return to the Continent as soon as possible. I doubt she’ll miss London much.”

“She’ll miss you. You seem to have been the closest thing she had to a friend.”

“A friend with an agenda.” Mary shivered. “This sort of work is always so morally compromising. Even when one begins with the best of intentions.”

James looked at her keenly. “Does it put you off?”

Mary thought about it. “Sometimes. Not enough to stop doing it, I don’t think. Not yet, at least. But enough that I need these sorts of conversations, to remind myself of who I am and what I believe.” She thought for a moment of the Agency, and the debriefing she was missing. It was the denouement she would never get: the meeting where she made a final report to Anne and Felicity and heard the full case from their perspective. Mary missed the closure that a formal report seemed to confer, and yet she didn’t. It was simply another interpretation, another lens through which to see the events that had transpired. Here was a new measure of her independence, now that she was the person creating the narrative, the author of her own case report.

“This is a good time to explain to you about Mrs Frame and Miss Treleaven,” she said, after another brief pause. She wasn’t surprised by James’s delicacy in not asking directly about the Agency. He was too observant to miss her hesitation there, her obviously conflicted loyalties. “I’ve wanted to tell you about them for some time, now, but never felt able: their secret was not mine to divulge. Now that you’ve met them, however, and seen them in action, it’s only reasonable to fill you in.” She paused for a moment.

“You know – I’ve told you – what happened when I was twelve.” Nearly a decade later, it remained difficult to articulate. Her almost-fate was hedged round with words, mere words, yet each time, those words caused her to relive the nightmare of her conviction for housebreaking, the despair of her prescribed fate at the gallows.

James nodded. “I know. Don’t pain yourself with the details.”

Mary drew a deep breath. “It was Anne and Felicity who saved me. From Newgate, I mean. They brought me to the Academy, where I lived and was educated. They were, essentially, my foster-mothers. I shall never cease to be grateful to them both, for the innumerable things they have done for me.” Her voice shook slightly, and James stroked her hand. They walked for a minute in silence.

“When I was seventeen, they revealed to me that they had a second, hidden life: they were the leaders of a secret detective agency staffed entirely by women. Its rationale is that because women are so habitually dismissed as foolish, vain and frivolous, we are therefore well positioned to exploit that stereotype as spies. Who would suspect a servant, or a female clerk? They invited me to join the Agency, and they trained me. My first assignment was as a lady’s companion to Angelica Thorold, in Chelsea.”

James looked startled, bemused. “That night we met, in the wardrobe?”

Mary smiled. “I should never have tried to search Mr Thorold’s study. I was embarrassingly inexperienced and desperate to impress Anne and Felicity.”

He squeezed her hand hard. “I’m so very glad you did.”

She returned the pressure. “A little over a year ago, Anne and Felicity began to have some significant differences of opinion about the future of the Agency. I hoped desperately that they would manage to resolve them. Instead, nine months ago, they parted ways. Anne continued to operate the Agency as a female-only establishment; Felicity founded a new firm, in which she planned to employ both men and women.”

“She asked if I would like to work with her again,” said James.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing, yet. But it occurs to me: that explains why, when Miss Treleaven arrived at the Bank on Saturday night, she spoke only to Mrs Frame. Mrs Frame was already there, and known, in male guise.”

Mary’s surprise was brief. “Yes. Anne would have wanted to preserve her secrecy as the female head of the Agency. And it would have been easy enough for Felicity to explain away her appearance: a female clerk, or perhaps an upper domestic, charged with a message.” She paused. “And that small act of collaboration explains what I saw yesterday, when I called upon Anne on a related matter.” It had been both a relief and a surprise to hear that Ivy Murchison’s wound was not yet infected. If things continued as they had begun, Miss Murchison might live. “I was extremely surprised to see Felicity there, at the Agency. She and Anne seemed to be in the middle of a long conversation and the atmosphere in the room was … intense. Intense and far from hostile. I think they miss each other more than they would ever admit. To a third party, anyway.”

“Do you think they might reconcile?”

“It’s far too soon to say. They are both incredibly stubborn.”

“So are we.”

She grinned at that. “And as we know, anything’s possible.”

They walked in silence for another full turn of the square before Mary said, “I don’t suppose Mrs Thorold deigned to explain to Scotland Yard how she planned to escape with her loot on a Sunday morning?”

“I don’t think she’s said anything at all. Do you have any theories?”

“Nothing so grand as a theory, but an idea. She was working as a domestic, and may have taken part in a Sunday excursion or two. She could have mingled with a group of Sunday holidaymakers and thence made her way to the coast. From there, I don’t know. She could have waited for a steam packet on Monday morning. Or possibly she had a boat waiting for her in one of the port towns.”

“The police may like to investigate that. I’ll pass it on.” He squeezed her hand. “I’ll be sure to tell them it came from my lady-associate.”

She laughed. “Only if something comes of it; if not, they can think it was your hare-brained conjecture.”

“Speaking of associates, is Lang really your cousin? And how far removed?”

Mary laughed again. “He is my father’s sister’s son. And his tale is so entirely incredible that I don’t really expect you to believe it.”

“Try me.”

“Disowned by his father, trained as a rebel soldier, wanted by the Imperial Army in China, seeking his long-lost uncle in London?”

James whistled softly. “Your family doesn’t believe in half measures, does it?”

“Apparently not.”

“What are his intentions in England? Does he plan to settle here?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure he does, either.”

“He might be a useful addition to Quinn and Easton.”

“I haven’t any idea whether he’d be interested, but we’ll certainly meet again. I hope to become much better acquainted with him.”

James hesitated. “I’m embarrassed now to confess that I am somewhat jealous of him.”

Mary shot him an incredulous look. “Of my cousin?”

“I didn’t know about the family connection; Mrs Frame simply told me that you were ‘intimate’ with a young Chinese man.”

“That’s cheap emotional leverage. You know better than to fall for that.”

“In theory, of course. But it’s quite different when it actually happens.” He paused. “Besides, cousins often marry.”

“Well, despite the continued popularity of first-cousin marriage, it holds no interest for me.”

“No? He’s handsome and strikingly talented. And he could offer you the exciting life you so enjoy. Just think: you could wear breeches every day and never see my housekeeper again.”

“It sounds terribly appealing, when you put it that way,” said Mary, “but I’m afraid I’m still rather partial to you.”

“Partial!” He feigned a wounded look. “One is
partial
to jam, or to three-volume novels.”

“Fond?” she offered, with a smile.

“Of a puppy, or a distant uncle?”

“All right.” Mary swung around to face him, taking both his hands and halting him mid-step. “James Easton, I am fervently, passionately, utterly, scandalously in love with you.”

He went utterly silent and still.

After a few moments, Mary laughed nervously. “James? A response would be nice.”

His voice was half strangled. “You’ve never said that – anything like that – before.”

“I didn’t think it needed saying.”

“It didn’t. But I’m beyond glad you did.” The hitch in his voice made her tremble. “As for a response, all I can think to do is kiss you blind, here in the middle of the street, until we’re arrested for public indecency.”

Every nerve in her body rose up. Her skin prickled with heat. After a moment, she managed to say, “All our hard work. Propriety and formal courtship and such.”

“Please, Mary, I want nothing more than to marry you. I want us to be one. How much longer must we wait?”

Mary paused. “‘Man and wife’?”

James caught the slight edge in her tone. “Yes, ‘man and wife’. And therein the difficulty lies.”

Mary clasped his arm and they resumed walking. “It’s not a difficulty with you,” she said. “I’m unreasonably confident that, as my husband, you will continue to treat me with respect. You will not impose your opinions upon me –”

“As if such a thing might be possible,” interrupted James.

“– or expect unquestioning obedience.”

“I would never have such fantastical delusions of my own power,” he murmured.

“Hush!” said Mary, with a laugh.

“I hear and obey.”

“You didn’t! You spoke!”

James smiled and sealed his lips with a dramatic gesture.

“My difficulty is with the legal arrangements,” said Mary. “Why should all my worldly goods automatically become yours upon our marriage? More importantly, why should we be
man and wife
, with me as yet another of your household chattels?”

They walked in silence for a few minutes. At last, James said quietly, “I haven’t good answers to those questions. I suppose I could promise always to treat you as an equal and to take utmost care with your possessions. But that doesn’t address the real difficulty. Mary, I’m keenly aware that if you choose to marry me, you are taking all the risk. I receive all the benefit. I retain all the power. And as such, I have no right to press you on the subject.

“This is but a weak answer, for there is no strong position I can take. But it is my hope that together we can create the sort of marriage that will, one day, be usual and customary. We will respect and advise and assist one another. We will be equal partners.

“If you can find it within yourself to trust me, in such an effort…” James stopped and took both her hands in his. “Mary, you know I hope you will. But I can also see how, as a woman who prizes her hard-won independence, this may be too great a sacrifice. Perhaps I am asking too much.” His gaze was sombre, his hands gentle. “All I can ask is that you give it your consideration. And I promise that I will accept your decision without complaint.”