The Case of the Missing Marquess (12 page)

I cried, “Help! Someone help me,” blundering into darkness, running, running, I knew not where.

“In here, ma’am,” said a man’s voice, high and squeaky, out of the shadows.

Someone had after all heard me crying for help. Nearly sobbing with relief, I turned towards the voice, plunging down a narrow, steep alley between buildings that reeked of tar.

“This way.” I felt his skinny hand take my elbow, guiding me a crooked way towards something that glimmered in the night. The river. My guide pulled me onto a narrow wooden walkway that shifted beneath my feet.

Some instinct, a misgiving, made me balk, my heart beating harder than ever.

“Where are we going?” I whispered.

“Just do as yer told.” And in less time than it takes to tell it, he had twisted my arm behind my back, shoving me forward, towards I knew not what.

“Stop it!” I braced the heels of my boots against the planks, suddenly more furious than afraid. I had, after all, been mauled about, had lost my carpet-bag, had been threatened by a knife, my clothing ruined, my plans also in tatters, and now the one whom I had thought to be my rescuer seemed to be turning into a new enemy. I became wrought. “Stop, villain!” I shouted as loudly as I could.

“Hold yer tongue!”

Twisting my arm painfully, he gave a hard shove. I could not help stumbling forward, but I continued to call out. “Curses! Let go of me!”

Something heavy clouted me over my right ear. I fell sideward into darkness.

 

It is not fair to say that I fainted. I have never fainted and I hope I never do. Say, rather, that for some time I was knocked out of my senses.

When I blinked and opened my eyes, I found myself awkwardly half sitting, half lying on an odd sort of curved plank floor, my hands bound behind my back and my ankles similarly tied, with rough hemp cord, in front of me.

Swinging from a crude plank ceiling close overhead, an oil lamp gave off a hot, choking odour as it leaked a dim light. I saw big stones grouped around turpentine-coloured water near my feet, as if in awful travesty of my favourite dell at home. The floor seemed to move beneath me. I felt light-headed. Closing my eyes, I waited for my sickness to pass.

But it did not pass. My sense of movement, I mean. And, I realised, I was light-headed only because my captor, whoever he was, had taken my hat away, probably for fear of its pins. My head, clad in only its own snaggled hair, felt exposed, and my world seemed to jolt and rock, but I was not ill.

I was, rather, lying in the cellar of a boat.

The hull, I mean. I remembered that was what they called it. While I had no experience of barges and ships and such, I had ridden in a rowboat a time or two, and I recognised the floating, bumping motion of a small craft in its stall, so to speak. In the water but with its head tied to a post. The ceiling where the lamp swung was the underside of a deck. The filthy puddle at my feet was called “bilge,” and the stones, I believe, were “ballast.”

Opening my eyes, peering into the gloom, I scanned my shadowy prison and realised that I was not alone.

From the opposite side of the hull, with his hands behind his back and his bound ankles just across the bilge from mine, a boy faced me.

Studied me.

Scowling dark eyes. Hard jaw.

Cheap, ill-fitting clothing. Bare feet that looked soft, sore, pale.

An uneven stubble of fair hair.

And a face I had seen before, although only upon the front page of a newspaper.

Viscount Tewksbury, Marquess of Basilwether.

BUT—BUT THAT WAS ABSURD. IMPOSSIBLE. He was supposed to be running away to sea.

Quite without any proper introduction I exclaimed, “What in Heaven’s name are
you
doing here?”

He arched his golden brows. “You presume an acquaintance, miss?”

“For mercy’s sake, I presume nothing.” Indignation and surprise spurred me to sit up straight, not without difficulty. And ill temper. “I
know
who you are,
Tewky.
”

“Don’t call me that!”

“Very well, Lord Tewksburial-at-sea, what are you doing barefoot in a boat?”

“One might with equal justice ask what a snip of a girl is doing all gadded up as a widow.” Sharpening, his tone grew ever more aristocratic.

“Oh,” I shot back, “a cabin boy with an Eton accent?”

“Oh. A widow with no wedding ring?”

Not being able to see my hands bound behind my back, I hadn’t realised. But now, propped upright by my bustle and working my fingers against the cords that bound my wrists, I exclaimed, “What did he take my gloves for?”

“They,” corrected His Lordship the Viscount. “Plural. Two of them. They wanted to steal your ring, and found none.” Despite his arrogant, lecturing air, I could see how ashen his face was, could see his lips trembling as he spoke. “They went through your pockets also, finding a few shillings, some hairpins, three licorice sticks, a rather filthy handkerchief—”

“Indeed.” I tried to quell this recitation, for the thought that, while I was unconscious, strange men had put their hands into my pockets—the very idea made me shudder. Thankfully, they had not actually touched my person, for my improvised wearable baggage remained where it belonged. I could feel bust enhancer, hip regulators, and dress improver occupying their positions.

“—a comb, a hairbrush, a flowery little booklet of some sort—”

My heart panged as if he had just killed my mother before my eyes. My eyes burned. But I had to bite my lip, for this was neither the time nor the place to mourn my loss.

“—and, as one side of your dress is sliced wide open, a glimpse of that scandalous pink corset you’re wearing.”

“Nasty boy!” My misery fueled anger. Hot with embarrassment and quivering with fury, I flared at him, “You deserve to be right where you are, bound hand and foot—”

“And how do you, dear girl no older than I, deserve the same?”

“I am older!”

“How much older?”

I almost told him before I remembered I must reveal my age to no one. Confound him, he was clever.

And, despite his bravado, frightened.

As frightened as I was.

After taking a deep breath, I asked him softly, “How long have you been imprisoned here?”

“Only an hour or so. While the little one was snatching me, it seems, the big one was following you for some reason. I—”

He broke off as heavy footsteps sounded overhead. They halted, a square of lantern light opened at the far end of our prison, and I found myself watching the rather ludicrous sight of a man appearing from the back and from the bottom up, rubber boots first, as he descended into our den by a ladder.

“No more’n an hour ago,” he said to someone up above as he climbed down; I recognised his squeaky voice. Skinny, stunted, bent, this man cowered like a much-kicked and underfed mongrel. “Found him right where ye tole me in yer wire, moochin’ about the docks where they berth the
Great Eastern
. We know what ter do wid ’im, but wot about the girl?”

“Much the same,” growled the other man’s voice as he descended in his turn. I knew that voice, too, and watched stoically as black-booted feet were followed by hulking limbs clad in dark clothing that might once have belonged to a gentleman, although now gone to seed. His pale kid gloves, I could see in the light of the lantern he bore, were yellow. Many gentry, men and ladies alike, wore kid gloves, often yellow, serving to advertise a certain social class.

When the back of the massive man’s head came into view, however, I saw that he wore not a gentleman’s hat, but the cloth cap of a labourer.

I was prepared, then, when he turned around and I saw his face.

It was, indeed, the cold white face that had peered like a baleful moon into my railway car compartment. Or a baleful white skull; as he removed his cap I saw that he was quite bald, disgustingly so, like a maggot, except for bristles of wiry reddish hair protruding from his ears.

“I thought ye were after ’er only in case I missed me mark,” said the other.

“To make doubly sure, yes,” drawled the big bald one, “but also because she says her name is Holmes.” As he spoke to his companion, he watched my face with malicious enjoyment, smirking as my eyes flew open and my jaw dropped. I could not help showing my shock, for how did he know who I was? How could he possibly know?

Satisfied by my reaction, he turned back to his companion. “She says she’s related to Sherlock Holmes. If that is true, there is swag to be got for her.”

“Why’d ye try to kill ’er, then?”

So this bulky man with the hair in his ears was, as I had surmised, the cutthroat who had attacked me.

He shrugged his burly shoulders. “She vexed me,” he said with chill indifference.

I managed to close my gaping mouth as things began to make sense. He had been looking for me on the train. He had followed me from the station.

Yet—yet nothing made sense. Why, accosting me, had he thought I knew where Lord Tewksbury was?

“Shrew.” The cutthroat looked straight at me with eyes like black ice, something—I could not think what—familiar about that glare, although I’ll not deny it scared me so badly that I shook. He told me, “Girls hereabouts mostly don’t have the shillings for corsets. I’ve sliced a few bellies wide open in my time. Don’t cross me again.”

I sat silent, unable to think of any suitable reply. In truth, frightened witless.

But then the other man, the rickety one, spoilt the effect by saying to his companion, “Well, ye better watch yerself and don’t make Sherlock ’Olmes vexed, either. Wot I hear, ye don’t fool wit’ that gent.”

The big one turned on him. “I fool with whomever I please.” His tone menaced like a knife blade. “I’m going to sleep. You guard these two.”

“That were my intention anyway,” the other muttered, but only after the hulking brute had disappeared back up the ladder.

 

The skinny one, the mongrel watchdog, settled himself with his back against the ladder and stared at us with vicious little eyes.

I demanded of him, “Who are you?”

Even in the dim light of the oil lamp, I could see that his yellow grin lacked several teeth. “Prince Charmant der Horseapple, at yer service,” he told me.

An obvious falsehood. I scowled at him.

“While we’re doing introductions,” said Lord Tewksbury to me, “what, pray tell, is your name?”

I shook my head at him.

“No talkin’,” Squeaky Voice said.

“What,” I asked him coldly, “do you and your friend intend to do with us?”

“Take ye dancin’, dearies. I told ye, no talkin’!” Unwilling to amuse this reprehensible person any longer, I lay down sideward on the bare planks, with the cut portion of my dress beneath me. I closed my eyes.

It is difficult to sleep, or even pretend to sleep, with one’s hands tied behind one. To make matters worse, the tips of my steel corset ribs jabbed me painfully under the arms.

My thoughts, as well as my body, were far from comfortable. The mention of “swag” indicated money, leading me to conclude that I was being held for ransom. I could not imagine a more humiliating way to be returned to my brothers, who would no doubt then send me off to boarding school with a spanking. I wondered whether they would take my money away. I wondered how, how,
how
the big ruffian had learned of me to follow me, and, even more appalling, had learned of Viscount Tewksbury and wired his mongrel-like accomplice about him. I wondered what “much the same” meant. Quivering with terror, I urged myself to be alert for any chance to escape. Yet at the same time I knew I would be wise to breathe more calmly, stop trembling, muster my energy, try to sleep.

Because of the shape of the boat’s hull, I lay on an incline somewhat hammock-shaped but far from restful, even with all the padding I wore. Shifting my limbs, I tried for a less cramped position, without success, because the steel ribs of my confounded corset now not only tormented my arms, but at the other end they poked through the rent in my dress, reminding me all too plainly of how that cutthroat’s knife had—

Steel. Knife.

I lay very still.

Oh. Oh, if only I could do it.

After a moment’s thought, I opened my eyes just enough to take a peek at Squeaky the Watchdog through my eyelashes. How fortunate that my modesty had made me lie upon my right side, facing him, in order to conceal my corset. He still sat with his back against the ladder, but with his head lolling. Asleep.

And why not, for as long as he remained in position by the ladder, how could we possibly get past him? But I would deal with that problem later.

As silently as I could, I turned the upper portion of my person, trying to place my bound wrists against a protruding rib of my corset.

It was not easy, as the slash in my dress was at the side. But by straining one arm to the utmost while propping myself up on the elbow of the other, clenching my teeth to keep from making a sound, I contrived to loop the cord that bound my wrists around the tip of a steel corset stay.

So twisted that I could barely move, I nevertheless managed to force back the heavily starched fabric that sheathed the steel.

Then, even more contorted, I began trying to cut through the cords.

Not once did I look at Lord Tewksbury. I tried to think of him as little as possible, and then only to assure myself he must be asleep. Otherwise, I would have felt the mortification of my posture beyond bearing.

Back and forth, back and forth, with great difficulty I sawed away with my hands and arms while pressing my bound wrists against the steel. Painfully, and for quite a long time. I cannot say how many foul hours ensued, for there was no telling night from day in that hole. There was no telling, either, whether I was making any progress against the cords, for I could not see what I was doing. I could feel that I was cutting
myself
. But I clenched my jaw and bore down all the harder, my gaze fixed on the sleeping guard, my ears straining to hear beyond my own panting breath. I felt more than heard the lapping of waves, the slopping of bilge water, the occasional muffled bump as the boat drifted against its pier—