The Ruby in the Smoke (2 page)

warded by her father's lawyer to the house in Peveril Square, Islington, where Sally was living. The house belonged to a distant relative of her father's, a grim widow called Mrs. Rees. Sally had been living there since August, and she was unhappy about it. But she had no choice: Mrs. Rees was her only living relative.

Her father had died three months before, when the schooner Lavinia had sunk in the South China Sea. He had gone out there to look into some odd discrepancies in the reports from the company's agents in the Far East— something that had to be investigated on the spot and could not be checked from London. He had warned her before he went that it might be dangerous.

"I want to speak to our man in Singapore," he had said. "He's a Dutchman called Van Eeden. I know he's trustworthy. If by some chance I don't come back, he'll be able to tell you why."

"Couldn't you send someone else?"

"No. It's my firm, and I must go myself."

"But Father, you must come back!"

"Of course I will. But you must be prepared for—for anything else. I know you'll do it bravely. Keep your powder dry, my dearest, and think of your mother...."

Sally's mother had died during the Indian Mutiny, fifteen years before—shot through the heart by a sepoy's rifle, at the same instant that a bullet from her pistol killed him. Sally was a few months old, their only child. Her mother had been a wild, stormy, romantic young woman, who rode like a Cossack, shot like a champion, and smoked (to the scandal of the fascinated regiment) tiny black cheroots in an ivory holder. She was left-handed, which was why she was holding the pistol in her left

hand, which was why she was clasping Sally with the right, which was why the bullet that struck her heart missed the baby; but it grazed her little arm and left a scar. Sally could not remember her mother, but she loved her. And since then she had been brought up by her father—oddly, in the view of various busybodies—but then. Captain Matthew Lx)ckhart's leaving the army to take up the unlikely career of shipping agent was odd enough in itself. Mr. Lockhart taught his daughter himself in the evenings and let her do as she pleased during the day. As a result, her knowledge of English literature, French, history, art, and music was nonexistent, but she had a thorough grounding in the principles of military tactics and bookkeeping, a close acquaintance with the affairs of the stock market, and a working knowledge of Hindustani. Furthermore, she could ride well (though her pony would not agree to the Cossack procedure); and for her fourteenth birthday her father had bought her a little Belgian pistol, the one she carried everywhere, and taught her to shoot. She was now nearly as good a shot as her mother had been. She was solitary, but perfectly happy; the only blight on her childhood was the Nightmare. This came to her once or twice a year. She would feel herself suffocating in intolerable heat—the darkness was intense—and somewhere nearby, a man's voice was screaming in terrible agony. Then out of the darkness a flickering light would appear, like a candle held by someone hurrying toward her, and another voice would cry, "Lxx>k! Look at him! Dear God—look—" But she did not want to look. It was the last thing in the world she wanted to do, and that was the point at which she woke up, drenched in perspiration, suffocating, and sobbing with fear. Her father would come running and calm her down,

and presently she would sleep again; but it took a day or so for her to feel free of it.

Then came her father's voyage, the weeks of separation, and finally the telegram telling of his death. At once her father's lawyer, Mr. Temple, had taken charge. The house in Norwood was shut up, the servants paid off, the pony sold. It seemed that there was some irregularity in her father's will, or in the trust he had set up, and that Sally was consequently going to be much poorer than anyone had thought. She was placed in the care of her father's second cousin Mrs. Rees, and there she had lived until this morning, when the letter came.

She thought until she had opened it that it must be from the Dutch agent, Mr. Van Eeden. But the paper was torn, and the writing clumsy and childlike; surely no European businessman would write like that? Besides, it was unsigned. She had gone to her father's office in the hope that someone there would know what it meant.

And she had found that someone did.

She went back to Peveril Square (she did not think of it as home) on the threepenny omnibus and prepared to face Mrs. Rees.

She had not been given a key to the house. This was one of Mrs. Rees's ways of making her feel unwelcome: she had to ring the bell every time she wanted to come in, and the maid who admitted her did so, always, with the air of having been interrupted during some more important task.

"Mrs. Rees is in the drawing room, miss," she said primly. "She says you're to go and see her the minute you get in."

Sally found the lady seated by a thin fire, reading a vol-

ume of her late husband's sermons. She did not look up when Sally entered, and Sally looked down at her faded gingery hair and loose, dead-white skin, loathing her. Mrs. Rees was not yet out of her forties, but had found early in life that the role of an aged tyrant suited her well, and played it for all it was worth. She acted as if she were a frail seventy; she had never in her life lifted a finger for herself or had a single kind thought for others, and she welcomed Sally's presence only for the chance it gave her to bully. Sally stood by the fire, waited, and finally spoke.

"I'm sorry I'm late, Mrs. Rees, but I—"

"It is Aunt Caroline, Aunt Caroline," said the lady, her voice whining and creaking irritably. "I have been told by my lawyer that I am your aunt. I did not expect it, I did not seek it, but I shall not shrink from it."

"The maid said you wished to see me. Aunt Caroline."

"I have been applying myself with little success to the subject of your future. Do you intend to remain under my care forever, I wonder? Or would five years be sufficient, or ten? I am merely trying to establish the scale of things. It is plain that you have no prospects, Veronica. I wonder if that had crossed your mind? What accomplishments have you?"

Veronica was Sally's given name. She hated it, but her aunt refused to call her Sally: that was a servant's name, she said. Unable to think of a polite answer, Sally stood mute and found her hands beginning to shake.

"Miss Lockhart is endeavoring to communicate with me by means of thought alone, Ellen," said Mrs. Rees to the maid, who was standing piously inside the door, hands folded and eyes wide with innocence. "I am supposed to understand her without the intervention of Ian-

guage. My education, alas, did not prepare me for such a task; in my day, we used words very frequently among ourselves. We spoke when we were spoken to, for instance."

"I am afraid I have no—accomplishments, Aunt Caroline," said Sally in a low voice.

"None but modesty, you mean to imply? Or is modesty simply the first of a long list? Surely so excellent a gentleman as your late father would not have left you quite unprepared for life?"

Sally shook her head helplessly. The death of Mr. Higgs, and now this . . .

"I thought so," said Mrs. Rees, glinting with a pale triumph. "So even the modest goal of governess is barred to you. We shall have to bend our thoughts to something yet more modest. Possibly one of my friends—Miss Tullett, perhaps, or Mrs. Ringwood—could in charity find room for a lady's companion. I shall make enquiries among them. Ellen, you may bring the tea."

The maid bobbed and left. Sally sat down heavyheart-edly, with the prospect of another evening of sarcasm and malice ahead of her, and the knowledge of mystery and danger outside.

The Web

Several days went by. there was an inquest, which Sally had to attend; Mrs. Rees had arranged (by the merest chance) a visit to her great friend Miss Tullett that morning, and found the inconvenience most vexing. Sally answered the coroner's questions quite truthfully: she had been speaking to Mr. Higgs about her father, she said, when suddenly he had died. No one pressed her closely. She was learning that if she pretended to be weak and frightened, and dabbed at her eyes with a lacy handkerchief, she could turn aside all manner of pressing questions. She disliked this intensely, but she had no other weapons—apart from the pistol. And that was no use against an enemy she could not see.

In any event, no one appeared surprised by the death of Mr. Higgs. A verdict of death by natural causes was returned; the medical evidence had disclosed a weakness of the heart, and the case was dealt with in less than half an hour. Sally went back to Peveril Square; life went back to normal.

But there was a difference. Without knowing it, she had shaken the edge of a web, and the spider at the heart of it

had awoken. Now, while she remained unaware (while she sat, in fact, in the uncomfortable drawing room of Miss Tullett and listened to that lady and Mrs. Rees discussing in catlike terms her own shortcomings), three events took place, each of which was to shake the web a little more, and turn the cold eyes of the spider toward London, and toward Sally.

First, a gentleman in a cold house read a newspaper.

Second, an old—what shall we call her? Till we know her better, let us give her the benefit of the doubt, and call her lady—an old lady entertained a lawyer at tea.

Third, a sailor in unhappy circumstances came ashore at the West India Docks and looked for a lodging house.

The gentleman in question was called Marchbanks; his servants, in the days when he'd had a full staff, had called him the Major. He lived thirty miles outside London, on the coast of Kent, overlooking a grim tract of land that was flooded at high tide, marshy at low, and desolate always. The house was empty of all but the bare necessities of life, for the Major's wealth had suffered a wasting disease. It was now on the verge of expiring.

On this particular afternoon the Major sat in the bay window of his chilly drawing room. The room faced north, out to the drab wilderness of water; gray and cold as it was, something drew him constantly to this side of the house, to watch the waves and the ships that passed farther out. But he was not looking out to sea just now; he was reading a newspaper lent to him by the only servant who remained—a cook-housekeeper so afflicted by drink and dishonesty that no one else at all would employ her.

Listlessly he turned the pages, holding the paper up to

the fading daylight so as to defer till the last possible moment the expense of lighting the lamps. His eyes scanned the columns of type with no sign of interest or hope— until he caught sight of a story on an inside page which made him sit up suddenly.

The paragraph which interested him most read:

The only witness to this sad event was Miss Veronica Lockhart, daughter of the late Mr. Matthew Lockhart, a former partner in the firm. Mr. Lockhart's own death, in the wreck of the schooner Lavinia, was reported in these pages last August.

He read it twice and rubbed his eyes. Then he got up and went to write a letter.

Beyond the Tower of London, between St. Katharine's Docks and Shadwell New Basin, lies the area known as Wapping: a district of docks and warehouses, of crumbling tenements and rat-haunted alleys, of narrow streets where the only doors are at second-floor level, surmounted by crude projecting beams and ropes and pulleys. The blind brick walls at pavement level and the brutal-looking apparatus above give the place the air of some hideous dungeon from a nightmare, while the light, filtered and dulled by the grime in the air, seems to come from a long way off—as if through a high window set with bars.

Of all the grim corners of Wapping, none is grimmer than Hangman's Wharf. Its wharfing days are long gone, though the name remains; now it consists of a row of warrenlike houses and shops, their rear rooms actually hang-

ing over the river—a ship's chandler, a pawnbroker's, a pie shop, a pub called the Marquis of Granby, and a lodging house.

Lodgings^ in the East End, is a word that covers a multitude of horrors. At its worst, it means a room steaming with damp and poisonous with stench, with a rope stretched across the middle. Those far gone in drink or poverty can pay a penny for the privilege of slumping against this rope, to keep themselves off the floor while they sleep. At its best, it means a decent, clean place where they change the linen as often as they remember. Somewhere in between, there is Holland's Lodgings. There, a bed for the night would cost you threepence, a bed to yourself fourpence, a room to yourself sixpence, and breakfast a penny. You were never alone at Holland's Lodgings. If the fleas disdained your flesh, the bedbugs had no snobbery; they'd take a bite out of anyone.

To this house came Mr. Jeremiah Blyth, a stout and shady lawyer of Hoxton. His previous business with the owner had been transacted elsewhere; this was his first visit to Hangman's Wharf.

His knock brought a child to the door—a girl whose only feature seemed to be, on that dingy afternoon, a pair of enormous, dark eyes. She opened the door a fraction and whispered: "Yessir?"

"Mr. Jeremiah Blyth," said the visitor. "Mrs. Holland is expecting me."

The child opened the door wide enough for him to enter, and then seemed to vanish into the gloom of the hallway.

Mr. Blyth went in, and drummed his fingers on his top hat, and stared at a dusty engraving of the death of Nel-

son, and tried not to guess at the origin of the stains on the ceiling.

Presently there shuffled in, preceded by the smell of boiled cabbage and old cat, the owner of the house. She was a wizened old woman with sunken cheeks, pinched lips, and glittering eyes. She held out a clawlike hand to her visitor and spoke—but she might have been speaking in Turkish for all the sense Mr. Blyth could make of it.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am.^ I didn't quite catch . . ."

She crowed and led the way into a tiny parlor, where the smell of old cat had been left to gain depth and maturity. Once the door was shut she opened a little tin box on the mantelpiece and took out a set of false teeth, fitting them into her wrinkled mouth and smacking her lips over them. They were too big for her and looked entirely horrible.