The Diamond Thief (7 page)

The Professor nodded, a thoughtful frown on his face. “And you are sure? That she is the thief?”

“Who else could it have been?”

His friend raised his shoulders slightly in an elegant shrug. “Things are not always as they seem, Thaddeus. You would do well to remember that.”

Thaddeus pulled out his pocket watch and looked at the time. It was just touching 5 o’clock in the morning. He stood up, taking hold of his now even more tattered coat. “Well,” he said. “In this case, professor, I know exactly how things are. And I intend to put them right before I end up paying for a crime I did not commit.”

“Where are you going?”

“To interrupt Lord Abernathy’s breakfast. I’ve got to start somewhere, haven’t I?”

Eight

An Unexpected Meeting

“Well, look on the bright side,” J whispered hoarsely, reaching up to pull a branch out of Rémy’s way. “It ain’t raining. Right?”

Rémy pushed forward through the undergrowth. J was right, the interminable rain had paused for a little while, but the bushes and grass around them were still soaking wet and the air was damp and clinging.

“It will be getting light soon,” she said quietly, glancing at the sky.

“Tsk, don’t you worry about that,” J told her dismissively. “There’s still plenty o’ dark in the sky. Anyway, this is just a look-see, right? You ain’t breaking in or nuffin’. Yet. Are yer?”

Rémy ignored him, pushing forward through yet another dripping bush. The night was always darkest before the dawn, they said, but it wasn’t the dark that bothered her – it was the cold. She pulled Claudette’s cloak more tightly about her shoulders and tried to ignore how icy her toes had become.

They were standing just inside the high brick wall of Lord Abernathy’s house at Beauvoir Square, about a third of a mile west of Whitechapel. It was large and square, built of pale yellow London brick that glowed faintly in the dim light, and set in about an acre of grounds. At the other end of the estate, against the far reach of the wall, was a set of outbuildings, probably for the gardener’s use.

“It is still not as big as I would have expected,” she muttered, to herself as much as anyone else. “Not for a lord.”

“Ah, well, this ain’t ‘is main place, is it? ‘E’s got a big place up north, so people say. An h’estate,” J said significantly. “Scotland, I fink. Stands to reason, don’ it? ‘Is name sounds like a Scot, don’ yer think?”

Rémy didn’t answer – she was too busy counting the windows that she could see. There were sixteen, and they were all closed fast and darkened. It didn’t seem as if the lord was awake yet. She guessed that his servants would be, though – it was fast approaching the crowing hour now and they’d be scuttling around in the windowless basement, stoking the fires to warm the house ready for when his Lordship rose.

“I want to get closer,” she said.

“Alrigh’, if you must, but just watch yerself. I ain’t coming to rescue yer if you get caught. Oi!” he added anxiously, as she kicked her boots off. “What’cha doin’? You ain’t planning to shimmy your way up no more drainpipes, are ya?”

Rémy danced from one bare foot to the other, trying to get some feeling back into them. She nodded to the gravel path that ran around the edge of the house and cut through the neatly-manicured lawn. “Less noise this way,” she said.

“Oh,” said J, with a nod. “Well, when you put it like that…”

Rémy glanced at him. J’s legs were barely covered by the tattered rags that stood for his trousers, and he was shivering in the cold morning air. She pulled off her cloak and pushed it towards him.

“Put it on,” she ordered, shortly. “Stay here. I will not be long.”

“Cor!” J said, his eyes as big as the large round pennies he rarely saw. “Fanks!”

Rémy left him cocooning himself in the warm material and pushed her way out of the undergrowth, stepping onto the close-cut grass. She moved quickly, avoiding the gravel paths to muffle her progress. She had to work out where the Darya-ye Noor was likely being hidden. Abernathy would keep it close, she guessed, but nowhere obvious – probably his study. He might have a strongbox, or perhaps, if she was fortunate, just a locked drawer. Although her legendary luck had been out of sorts ever since she reached England, she reminded herself, as her bare feet slid into a puddle left from the last downpour.

Rémy reached the wall of the house and looked up. There were four floors, each with four windows. A bit grand for one person, even if he was a lord. Rémy thought back to Gustave’s pronouncement that Abernathy was nothing of the kind. She wondered why he had said that – J had seemed convinced that he was. Rémy sighed to herself. It was funny, she’d spent her life at the circus trying to avoid spending time with Gustave, but now there were many things she’d like to ask him. She wondered if she’d ever get the chance.

Shaking her head, Rémy forced herself to concentrate. She had to see inside. If she could understand the layout of the house, it might give her a clue as to where Abernathy was hiding the stone. Rémy glanced back towards the bush where J was hiding. The boy would be horrified if he knew what she was contemplating, but she had no choice.

Placing her hands against the rough stone, Rémy looked up. There were plenty of handholds if you were brave enough. She took a deep breath. Then she began to climb.

She made it as far as the second floor and was balancing on a narrow brick window ledge when she heard a sound that chilled her blood. It was a dog barking – no, not one, not even two – it was the baleful sound of a whole pack. It was hard to pinpoint where they were, but the noise was getting louder by the second. Rémy looked over to the bush where she’d left J and saw that he’d scrambled out of his hiding place and was now standing on the lawn, frantically trying to attract her attention. On finally catching her eye, he shouted something she couldn’t hear and then pointed to the other end of the grounds, around the corner of Abernathy’s house, back towards the outbuildings she’d noticed earlier. He looked terrified.

A second later, the dogs appeared. There were five of them – huge and black, with slavering jaws opened wide to display their massive teeth. J turned to run, but there was no way he’d make it back to the wall in time. Rémy looked up – she could climb higher and get to the roof – there was no reason to think that the servants knew there was more than one intruder. She could sit up there all day if she had to and slip out once they’d locked the dogs away again.

But that would mean leaving J to his fate. She looked down again, seeing the scrawny little figure slipping and sliding over the wet grass as the dogs grew closer. Of course she couldn’t leave him. He was just a child, and she was the only reason he was here at all.

Rémy took a deep breath and then issued a high-pitched shriek that immediately made the dogs look around. Then she leapt from her perch.

The gravel below gave a harsher landing than the soft sawdust of the circus ring, but Rémy was used to falling hard. She dropped, let herself roll as soon as her feet hit the ground, and was upright again almost immediately. The dogs, having forgotten J, were coming at her fast. She glanced at J who had frozen in fear.

“Run!” she screamed at him, over the sound of the dogs. “Don’t stand there – run!”

She didn’t wait to see if he did as he was told, plunging instead along the gravel path that led towards the park’s main entrance, the rough stones cutting into her soles. Rémy ignored the pain – it was no worse than the times she’d missed Dominique’s back during training. She rounded the south corner of the house and saw the city crowding against the big iron gates. The street lights were beginning to fade into the growing dawn.

Rémy could feel the dogs on her heels as she sprinted the open distance towards her only hope of escape. Behind her, lights had been lit in the big house. All she could do was hope that the staff or their master didn’t have a weapon to hand, or there would be something besides the dogs trying to tear holes in her.

By the time she was in reach of the gate, one of the animals was close enough to snap at her heels. Its teeth grazed her leg, leaving a trail of saliva. Rémy used all her remaining strength to jump at the gate, clanging against the wrought iron curlicues and holding on for dear life.

Below her, the dogs had not given up. They howled as their quarry scrambled further out of reach. They crashed against the metal, their powerful shoulders shaking the gates on their hinges as Rémy struggled to hold on.

She heard shouts behind her, and looked up to see someone leaning out of a high window of the big house. Desperate not to be caught, Rémy dragged herself up the gate, hands and feet gripping the black-painted iron. Twice she almost fell – once dropping far enough to feel the teeth of one of the animals biting into her bare heel before she managed to haul herself away again. But for all her exhaustion, Rémy was still as quick as a fox and twice as agile. Before the men of the house had even got out of the door she was over the top of the gate and leaping down towards the dirty wet cobbles of the street outside…

…and straight into the arms of the boy with the mismatched eyes.

* * *

Thaddeus – at the Professor’s insistence and out of his generosity, too – had hailed another cab to take him to Lord Abernathy’s house. He would have been happy to walk – after all, it was still too early to knock on the door of a peer of the realm, and walking would have both served to clear Thaddeus’ head and get him there at a respectable hour. But the Professor had pointed out that strolling around the streets as a wanted man was ill advised, and also that it was raining hard. He insisted that arriving dripping wet to converse with a lord would appear odd, and, given Thaddeus’ situation, the last thing he needed was to be immediately put at a disadvantage. So the younger man had bowed to the Professor’s wisdom and done as he was told.

It meant, however, that he had a lot of time to kill before he could request an audience with Lord Abernathy. He’d bought the early edition of the penny paper, but decided to walk a circuit of the outer wall of Abernathy’s home before finding a dry patch of wall to lean against as he read it. And so it was that, when the commotion inside started, Thaddeus was on the other side of the wall.

At first he thought a fox had wandered across the dogs’ path, sending them into a frenzied bloodlust. But then he heard a weird sound, almost like a scream but at a much higher pitch, and then, in between the baying of the dogs, the sound of feet running on gravel.

He got to the front gate in time to see a small figure dressed in black fling itself at the metal barrier and begin to climb. Assuming that no one leaving a property in such a manner was doing so after lawful entry, Thaddeus stepped forward to apprehend the fleeing criminal.

“Now then,” he said as he gripped the surprised intruder as soon as his feet touched the ground. “What are you up to?”

He found himself, to the astonishment of them both, looking into the shocked and pale face of Rémy Brunel.

“You!”

The girl struggled, trying to pull herself free of his hands. “Let me go!”

Thaddeus snorted with laughter. “Not likely,” he told her. “I know what you did. I know what you took! And now you’re going to pay for it!”

She fought like a wildcat, in a flurry of limbs and with nails like claws, but Thaddeus wouldn’t let go. He was taller, and despite the able muscles he felt in her thin arms, he was stronger, too. He wrestled her against the wall and pinned her there, ignoring the stream of French she spat at him. He suspected the translation may be a little unladylike.

“What are you doing here, eh? Thought you’d come and steal from a defenceless old man, did you? Didn’t bank on those dogs though, did you? Now, tell me where the Ocean of Light is.” He shook her, running out of patience. “Where have you hidden it?”

“I don’t have it,” she hissed, still struggling. “You stupid fool! Let me go! I don’t have it!”

“Not on you, no – but somewhere. Tell me.”

The girl shook her head violently, hair flying around her head. “I did not take it!
Imbécile!
He did!”

Thaddeus frowned. “Who?”

“Abernathy. Your precious Lord. He is the thief, not me!”

Thaddeus laughed again, in disbelief this time. “My God, you circus lot really do know how to spin a yarn, don’t you?”

Rémy began to fight him again, but Thaddeus still refused to let her go. He wrapped one arm around her and held her fast against him, using the fingers of his free hand to issue a shrill whistle. A cab drew to a halt on the other side of the street.

“Come on, my girl,” he said, the mass of her hair tickling his nose. “It’s back to Scotland Yard for you.”

“Don’t do that, Mr Rec.”

The voice that spoke behind him was thin and reedy. Thaddeus turned to see a young boy standing in the dawn shadows. It was another face Thaddeus recognised.

“J? What the blazes are you doing here?”

The boy pointed at Rémy Brunel, who was currently kicking at Thaddeus’ ankles. Thankfully, he was still wearing his police-issue boots.

“I’m wiv ‘er, Mr Rec.”

Thaddeus looked between his captive and the street boy. “What? Oh, no, J. I thought we’d talked about this? The last time I caught you? You said, no more burglaries. You said you were going to go to the Sally Ann.”

“We weren’t stealing! I was just… ‘elping,” J said. “Anyhow, it ain’t stealing when the fing is already stole!”

“What?” Thaddeus said, confused.

“I told you, foolish man,” growled the defiant girl in his arms. “I did not steal the Darya-ye Noor. Abernathy did.”

“I fink you should listen to ‘er, Mr Rec,” said J, stepping closer. “That Abernathy, ‘e’s bad news. And I don’t know ‘er there too well, but she’s a good sort. She bought me breakfast, di’n’t she? After I tried to rob ‘er, ‘n all. So, ‘ow about you listen? Just for an hour or so, like. You was always good at that, Mr Rec. Listening.”

“I don’t have the jewel,” said Rémy. “So if you imprison me, you will never get it back.”

Thaddeus tried to think, but couldn’t concentrate with the girl still struggling against him. “Stop,” he said into her ear. “Please, just stop, for a moment. Let me think.”

She calmed then, but he didn’t let her go. Thaddeus looked down, saw her bruised and bloodied bare feet, and absently wondered where her shoes were. If he took her back to Glove now, he’d have no more proof in his favour than if he’d hauled a random woman in from the street. And he’d be risking walking back into the lion’s den. But the idea that Lord Abernathy could somehow be responsible for all this was preposterous. Wasn’t it?