The Case of the Missing Marquess (11 page)

Also—and rumbling backwards towards the great city, I found myself smiling beneath my veil at this thought—the idea of hiding beneath my brothers’ noses appealed all the more now that they knew. I would revise their opinion of the cranial capacity of their accidental younger sister.

Very well. London it was.

But circumstances had changed so that I could not, upon arriving in the city, take a cab. Sherlock Holmes would inquire of the cabdrivers. Therefore, I would have to walk. And night was coming on. But I could not now allow myself a hotel room. Surely my brother would inquire at all the hotels. I would have to walk for quite a distance to get myself well away from the railway station—but where to go? If I took the wrong street, I might find myself in company with someone who was not a nice sort of person. I might encounter a pickpocket, or—or perhaps even a cutthroat.

Most unpleasant.

And just as I thought this, averting my eyes from the dizzying scene outside the train’s window, I glanced up instead at the glass in the corridor door.

I very nearly screamed.

There, like a full moon rising, a large face peered into the compartment.

With his nose actually pressed against the glass, the man looked in, scanning each occupant in turn. With no change in his cold expression he fixed his shadowy gaze on me. Then he turned away and moved on.

Gulping, I looked around at my fellow passengers to see whether they, too, were frightened. It appeared not. In the seat next to me, a workman in a cap sprawled snoring, his rough square-toed boots thrust out into the middle of the floor. Opposite him, a fellow in shepherd’s-plaid trousers and a homburg hat studied a newspaper which, judging by etchings of jockeys and horses, concerned itself with the racetrack. And next to him, opposite me, a squat old woman fixed me with her cheery gaze.

“Something the matter, duckie?” she inquired.

Duckie? A most peculiar mode of address, but I let it pass, asking merely, “Who was that man?”

“What man, ducks?”

Either she hadn’t seen him at all, or it was perfectly normal for large bald men wearing cloth caps to peer into railroad parlours, and I was being a fool.

Shaking my head dismissively, I murmured, “No harm done.” Although my heart declared me a liar.

“Yer looking a bit white under all that black,” my new acquaintance declared. Common, toothless crone, instead of a proper hat she wore a huge old-fashioned bonnet with a brim that flared like a fungus, tied with an orange ribbon under her bristly chin. Instead of a dress she wore a fur wrap gone half bald, a blouse somewhat less than white, an old purple skirt with new braid stuck on its faded hem. Peering at me like a robin hopeful of crumbs, she coaxed, “Yers a recent loss, duckie?”

Oh. She wanted to know about my fictitious dear departed husband. I nodded.

“And now yer bound ter London?”

Nod.

“It’s the old story, isn’t it, ducks?” The vulgar old woman leaned towards me with as much glee as pity. “Catched yerself a likely ’un, ye did, but now he’s died”—such was the brutal word she used—“gone and died on you, he has, and left you wit’out the means to feed yerself? And ye, as yer lookin’ so sick, maybe wit ’is child in yer belly?”

At first I could scarcely understand. Then, never having heard anything so unwhisperable stated out loud, and in a public place, yet, in the presence of
men
(although neither of them seemed to notice), I found myself shocked speechless. A fiery flush heated my face.

My friendly tormentor seemed to consider my blush to be affirmation. Nodding, she leaned even closer to me. “And now yer thinking ye can find yerself summat to support ye in the city? ’Ave ye ever been t’London before, m’dear?”

I managed to shake my head.

“Well, don’t be makin’ the old mistake, duckie, no matter what the gentlemuns promise.” She leaned closer, as if telling me a great secret, yet did not lower her voice. “If ye need a few pennies to yer pocket, ’ere’s the dodge: take a petticoat or two out from under yer dress—”

I truly thought I would faint. The workman, blessedly, snored on, but the other man unmistakably lifted his newspaper to hide his face.

“—won’t never miss ’em,” the toothless crone gabbled on. “Why, many’s a woman in London hain’t got a petticoat to ’er name, and ye with ’alf a dozen, I’ll warrant by the puffing and the rustling of ’em.”

I desperately wanted the journey and this ordeal to end, so much so that I risked a look at the window. Houses upon houses whisked past the glass now, and taller buildings, pressed together, brick to stone.

“Take ’em to Culhane’s Used Clothing on Saint Tookings Lane, off Kipple Street,” relentlessly continued the hag, whose squat presence now reminded me more of a toad than a robin. “Down in the East End, ye know. Ye can smell yer way there by the docks. And mind, once ye find Saint Tookings Lane, don’t go to one of them other dealers, but straight to Culhane’s, where ye’ll get a fair sum for yer petticoats, if ’em’s real silk.”

The man with the newspaper rattled it and cleared his throat. Gripping the edge of my seat, I leaned away from the shocking hag as far as my bustle would allow. “Thank you,” I muttered, for while I had no intention of selling my petticoats, nevertheless this dreadfully common old woman had helped me.

I had been wondering how I was to dispose of my widow’s clothing and get something else. Of course, I had plenty of money to order anything I wanted, but the construction of clothing takes time. Moreover, surely my brother would inquire of the established seamstresses, and surely I would be remembered if, all clad in black, I were fitted for anything except more black, or grey with perhaps a touch of lavender or white. After the first year in mourning, that was all one was supposed to wear. Yet, given my brother’s cleverness, none of that would do. I could not merely modify my appearance; I needed to transform it completely. But how? Pluck garments off of washing-lines?

Now I knew. Used clothing shops. Saint Tookings Lane, off Kipple Street. In the East End. I did not think my brother was likely to inquire there.

Nor did I think—as I should have—that I would risk my life, venturing there.

FROM MY SEAT ON THE TRAIN I CAUGHT only fleeting glimpses of London. But when I emerged from Aldersgate Station, meaning to walk briskly away, instead I stood for a moment gazing at a metropolis so dense and vast. All around me towered a man-made wilderness, buildings taller and more forbidding than any trees that ever were.

My brothers lived here?

In this—this grotesque brick-and-stone parody of any world I had ever known? With so many chimney-pots and roof-peaks looming dark against a lurid, vaporous orange sky? Lead-coloured clouds hung low while the setting sun oozed molten light between them; the Gothic towers of the city stood festive yet foreboding against that glowering sky, like candles on the Devil’s birthday cake.

I stared until I grew aware of hordes of indifferent city-dwellers brushing past me, going about their business. Then I took a deep breath, closed my mouth, swallowed, and turned my back to this curiously ominous sunset.

Here in London, just as anywhere else, I told myself, the sun went down in the west. Therefore, forcing my flabbergasted limbs to move, I walked down a broad avenue leading in the opposite direction—for I wanted to go east, towards the used clothing stores, the docks, the poor streets. The East End.

Within a few blocks I walked into narrow streets shadowed by crowded buildings. Behind me the sun sank. In the city night, no stars or moon shone. But swatches of yellow light from shop windows draped the pavement, seeming to drag down the intervening darkness all the blacker, darkness out of which passersby appeared like visions, vanishing again in a few steps. Like figures out of a dream again they appeared and disappeared on the corners, where gas street-lamps cast wan skirts of light.

Or figures out of a nightmare. Rats darted in and out of the shadows, bold city rats that did not run away as I walked by. I tried not to look at them, tried to pretend they were not there. I tried not to stare at an unshaven man in a crimson cravat, a starveling boy with his clothing in rags, a great brawny man wearing a bloodied apron, a barefoot Gypsy woman on a corner—so there were Gypsies in London, too! But not the proud nomads of the country. This was a dirty beggar, all grimed like a chimney-sweep.

This was London? Where were the theatres and the carriages, the jewelled ladies in fur wraps and evening gowns, the gold-studded gentlemen in white ties and cutaway tails?

Instead, like a kind of walking doghouse, along came a pale man wearing sign-boards, front and back:

Dirty children swirled around him, taunting, knocking his dented derby off his head. A capering girl shrieked at him, “Where do ye keep the mustard?” Evidently a great joke, for her mates laughed like little banshees.

The dark streets rang with such noise, shopkeepers roaring at the street urchins, “Be off with you!” while wagons rattled past and a fishmonger cried, “Fresh haddock fer yer supper!” and sailors shouted greetings to one another. From an unswept doorway a stout woman shrieked, “Sarah! Willie!” I wondered if her children were tormenting the board-man. Meanwhile, folk brushed past me, chatting in vulgarly loud voices, and I walked faster, as if I could somehow escape.

What with so many strange sights and so much commotion, small wonder I didn’t hear the footsteps following me.

I did not notice until the night deepened and darkened—or so it seemed at first, but then I realised it was the streets themselves that had grown grimmer. No more shops gave light, only glaring public houses on the corners, their drunken noise spilling into the darkness. I saw a woman standing in a doorway with her face painted, red lips, white skin, black brows, and I guessed I was witnessing a lady of the night. In her tawdry low-cut gown she reeked so badly of gin that I could smell it even above the stench of her seldom-washed body. But she was not the only source of odour; the whole East End of London stank of boiled cabbage, coal smoke, dead fish along the nearby Thames, sewage in the gutters.

And people. In the gutters.

I saw a man lying drunk or sick. I saw children huddled together like puppies to sleep, and I realised they had no homes. My heart ached; I wanted to awaken those children and give them money to buy bread and meat pies. But I made myself walk on, lengthening my stride. Uneasy. Some sense of danger—

A dark form crawled along the pavement in front of me.

Crawled. On her hands and knees. Her bare feet dragging.

I faltered to a halt, staring, struck motionless and witless by the sight of an old woman reduced to such wretchedness, with only a single torn and thread-bare dress inadequately covering her, no underpinnings beneath it. Nothing on her head, either, not even so much as a rag of cloth, and no hair. Only a mass of sores covered her scalp. I choked back a cry at the sight, and dully, creeping at a snail’s pace on her knuckles and her knees, she lifted her head a few inches to glance at me. I saw her eyes, pallid like gooseberries—

But I had stood still a moment too long. Heavy footsteps sounded behind me.

I leapt forward to flee, but it was too late. The footfalls rushed upon me. An iron grip grasped my arm. I started to scream, but a steely hand clamped over my mouth. Very close to my ear a deep voice growled, “If you move or cry out, I
will
kill you.”

Terror froze me. Wide-eyed, staring into darkness, I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe. As I stood gasping, his grip left my arm and snaked around me, clasping both arms forcibly to my sides, pressing my back against a surface that might as well have been a stone wall had I not known it to be his chest. His hand left my mouth, but within an instant, before my trembling lips could shape a sound, in the dim night I saw the glint of steel. Long. Tapering to a point like a shard of ice. A knife blade.

Dimly, also, I saw the hand that held the knife.

A large hand in a kidskin glove of some tawny colour.

“Where is he?” the man demanded, his tone most menacing.

What? Where was who? I could not speak.

“Where is Lord Tewksbury?”

It made no sense. Why would a man in London be accosting me about the noble runaway? Who could know I had been in Belvidere?

Then I remembered the face I had seen pressed against the glass, peering into the train compartment.

“I will ask you once more, and once only,” he hissed. “Where is Viscount Tewksbury, Marquess of Basilwether?”

It must by then have been past midnight. Shouts blurred by ale still rang from the public houses, along with bawdy off-key singing, but the cobblestones and pavements stood empty. What I could see of them. Anything could have lurked in the shadows. And this was not the sort of place where one could hope for help.

“I—I, ah . . . ,” I managed to stammer, “I have no idea.”

The knife blade flashed under my chin, where, through my high collar, I could feel its pressure against my throat. Gulping, I closed my eyes.

“No games,” my captor warned. “You are on your way to him. Where is he?”

“You are mistaken.” I tried to speak coolly, but my voice shook. “You are labouring under some absurd delusion. I know nothing of—”

“Liar.” I felt murder in his arm muscles. The knife jumped, jerked in his hand, slashing at my throat, finding instead the whalebone of my collar. With what could have been my last breath I screamed. Twisting in the cutthroat’s grip, flailing, I lashed upwards and backwards with my carpet-bag, feeling it hit his face before it flew out of my grasp. He cursed fearsomely, but although his hold on me loosened, he did not let go. Shrieking, I felt his long blade stab at my side, strike my corset, then stab again, seeking a passageway to my flesh. Instead, it slit my dress, a long, ragged wound, as I tore away from him and ran.