A Ruse of Shadows, page 15
“I have one last request, if you will humor me. I’d like to know about the parties that inquired after Mr. Underwood. If I can find them, perhaps they might have something to tell me.”
Mr. Constable hesitated.
Charlotte added, “And no need to tell me anything about the first party. I assume they came at the behest of the crown.”
The accountant stared at her for a moment, his fingertips scratching against the leather binding of the notebook. “All right, then. I won’t say anything about them. I’m sure, Mr. Herrinmore, you also wouldn’t wish me to divulge the specifics of our conversation.”
“To the contrary, sir,” Charlotte said generously, “I shall have no quarrels with your disclosure to all and sundry that Edmond Herrinmore, on behalf of Mr. Harold Nelson of Manchester, has inquired after Mr. Underwood’s dealings with you, in order to ascertain whether he is likely to return and make trouble for Mr. Nelson, if the latter were to take Mr. Underwood’s former boxers under his wing.
“However, I do understand your hesitation, and I commend you for your scruples. Shall we do it another way? Let me tell you my conjecture. If I’m wrong, please say so. But if I’m right, you need say nothing.”
Before the startled accountant could object, she said, “The first party, which came late last year, represented the crown—and we need say no more about them. The second party, I am guessing, consisted of a woman who claimed to be Mr. Underwood’s fiancée.
“She was beautiful and distressed. Perhaps she was interested in your records on the boxers’ stipends and perhaps she wasn’t. But the main objective of her visit was not that. Instead, she was terribly interested in whether you had directed payment to another woman on Mr. Underwood’s behalf.”
“You know Mrs. Anderson?” Mr. Constable blurted out.
Mrs. Anderson? Was she the other woman—or Mrs. Claiborne under a different guise?
“Was she a brunette who spoke with a French accent?”
“Not at all. She was fair-haired and spoke the Queen’s English.”
“Indeed.”
“She—” Mr. Constable stopped himself, as if remembering that he had just been praised for his discretion.
“I imagine she came not too recently,” said Charlotte, “but also not too long ago. Let’s say, sometime between when Mr. Underwood’s money ran out in April and the middle of June.”
Which would have been roughly six weeks ago, around the time Mrs. Claiborne had to decamp from the villa to the much more cramped town house.
“How—how do you know all this? She came at the beginning of June,” said Mr. Constable, once again forgetting to cleave to a professional tight-lippedness.
Charlotte ignored his question—her deductions had the greatest impact when they were shrouded in mystery. “I already know that Mr. Waters and Miss Ferguson called on you, so naturally they must form the third party who came before me. I take it they came very recently, within the past ten days—perhaps even within this past week.”
“True, on Monday.”
Five days ago then. “And were they, like me, interested in prior parties who had inquired about Mr. Underwood?”
“Why, they—” Mr. Constable started. He stood the notebook still in his hand on its bottom edge and tapped it several times against the surface of his desk. “I’m afraid I cannot and should not say anything more on the matter.”
Charlotte nodded gravely. “Again, I commend you on your circumspection, Mr. Constable. You wouldn’t happen to have the address for either this Mrs. Anderson or the boxers, would you?”
Mr. Constable exhaled. “I cannot help you with that at all, Mr. Herrinmore. Both parties declined to leave addresses.”
Charlotte could imagine Mumble and Jessie learning about the existence of a woman in Mr. Underwood’s life from the insufficiently guarded accountant. But assuming this Mrs. Anderson was indeed Mrs. Claiborne in disguise, how had they obtained her address if she hadn’t given it here?
She rose. “I thank you for your patience and generosity, Mr. Constable. You have been most helpful.”
Mr. Constable winced.
Fourteen
After she left Mr. Constable’s office, Charlotte could not find Mumble or Jessie. Jessie had already left for the day, having taken an earlier shift to help with the tea shop’s baking—the proprietress didn’t trust bread from nearby bakeries not to be adulterated with alum, chalk, or plaster of paris. And the bookbinding shop where Mumble worked as an apprentice was closed for the Jewish Sabbath.
Charlotte did, however, manage to locate Johnny at his construction site. The day was overcast and relatively cool, not bad for working outside. And Johnny had already made substantial progress on the wall he was building. He was climbing down the scaffolding as she arrived.
“May I have the pleasure of buying you your luncheon, Mr. Esposito?”
“I brought my lunch, and I’d best eat it. But if you’re in a generous mood, Mr. Herrinmore,” answered Johnny, rinsing the mortar from his hands, “I wouldn’t mind having something to take back to the family.”
Charlotte promptly crossed the busy intersection and bought a trio of grilled sausages and a ham pie from a street vendor. When she came back, Johnny had laid out his lunch on a plank set upon two stacks of bricks. His meal consisted of a single sandwich, which looked substantial at first glance, but on closer examination turned out to be only two slabs of bread with an almost invisible layer of butter in between.
Johnny stared at the glistening, faintly blistered sausages she set down before him. “Thank you. My family will enjoy these.”
“These aren’t for your family—I’ll buy some for them later. These are for you, for lunch. A man who works all day ought to have more than bread for lunch.”
Johnny, for whom pride must be an unattainable luxury, offered no protests. He thanked “Mr. Herrinmore” and tucked into the bounty. And only after he’d polished off everything Charlotte had bought did he pause to say, “Today it isn’t only bread. There’s butter and a bit of sheep’s trotter inside, too. Plenty enough to get me through the rest of the day.”
He asked for so little, this young man.
Or maybe it was more accurate to say that he was accustomed to almost nothing and expected even that to be taken away.
“I was looking for your friends, Mumble and Jessie. I might have bought them luncheon if I’d found them, but I didn’t.”
“Guess it’s my lucky day then.” Johnny pinched a bite from his sandwich. “They weren’t at work?”
“No. Do you know where they live?”
He shook his head.
“I thought you all were good friends.”
He chewed without speaking. All around them, workers carted squeaky wheelbarrows back and forth. Sandwich board men trundled by, advertising custard powders and shoe polish. A bobby blew his whistle on the next street, shouting for a pair of unruly drivers to behave themselves.
Just as Charlotte thought Johnny wasn’t going to answer her, he said, “We are—we are all friends.”
His tone, both hesitant and emphatic, as if he’d just come to that conclusion himself…
“Last year Jessie baked a beautiful cake for my mamma’s birthday. It was decorated like a garden, with roses and tulips made from marzipan—all because Mamma told her that she wished she had a garden.
“Mumble…” He touched the inside of his bare forearm, still splattered with bits of mortar, as if at a sudden recollection. “After Mr. Underwood became my sponsor, I put my brothers back into school. But it was hard—they were behind all the other pupils. When Mumble came along, I asked if he could help them. He reads a book a day, Mumble—the bookbinder has rooms full of books at home and loans them to him by the boxful. And he’s good with numbers, too, from looking after the shop’s accounts. So Mumble came on Saturday evenings for a full year to catch them up.
“And every time he came, Jessie sent along baked goods from the tea shop. They said those were stale buns and biscuits that Mrs. Hatfield let Jessie have for next to nothing, but they tasted perfectly fresh to me, and I don’t think Mrs. Hatfield is all that generous.”
He took another bite from his brick of a sandwich. After three sausages and a ham pie, and a sizable supper the previous evening, Charlotte doubted that his stomach wanted more food. But he ate with the same doggedness with which he’d endured—and overcome—the boxing match.
“Yes, we are friends,” he repeated, “even if I don’t know where they live.”
His voice fell. “Even if they won’t let me do anything for them in return.”
A street musician began playing nearby, a violin rendition of Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major.
Johnny listened for some time and said, rather savagely, “Mumble plays much better.”
Mumble, Charlotte was beginning to think, could do no wrong in this young man’s eyes.
“Do they live together, Mumble and Jessie?”
“I think so, but don’t get the wrong idea. They’re foster siblings—they grew up together.”
The thought that someone might get the wrong idea about Mumble and Jessie seemed to bother him—and Charlotte didn’t think his anxiety was on Jessie’s behalf. “How long have you known them?”
“Two and a half years—since the beginning of ’85.”
Which accorded with Mr. Constable’s records and receipts.
“When did you start boxing?”
“The year before I met them.”
“To help your family? You don’t seem interested in boxing for its own sake.”
“I hate it.” He drank from a dented canteen whose strap had been mended in two places. “After my old man died, we couldn’t make ends meet, not even with me and my two brothers all working. Someone said that I was a scrappy bugger and ought to try boxing. So I did. Guess that was a good idea.”
“Who said that?”
“Not sure. Some bum tried to steal my bread and ran away after I punched him. A bystander said it, I think. Gave me a two-bit bob and told me that at the Unicorn of the Sea, if I could prove myself I might just get a sponsor and wouldn’t have to scrap for bread anymore.”
Some fifteen feet away, a workman, probably freshly returned from luncheon, began breaking rocks with an awl and a hammer. In the greater din, Charlotte considered Johnny’s answer. “What did this man look like?”
Johnny shrugged again. “The bum I fought ran off, but not before he left me with a pair of black eyes. I could barely see. All I remember is that the fellow who made the suggestion had a thick cockney accent.”
“When did your father pass away, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“March of 1884. March twentieth.”
“And how much time after his death did this incident take place? This near robbery that led to the comment that began your boxing career?”
“Must have been two months afterwards? Yes, end of May.” Johnny, finished with his sandwich, sighed in relief and downed the rest of the water in his canteen. “It was the day before my little sister’s birthday, and I remember thinking that I couldn’t let her go hungry on her birthday.”
Mr. Underwood first visited Mr. Constable the accountant that April, a full month before the idea of becoming a boxer had even taken hold in Giovanni Esposito’s head.
“Did you go to the Unicorn soon afterwards?”
“As soon as my black eyes faded, I went and took a look. But then I had to convince my mother that it wasn’t the worst idea since the creation of man. And she’d have held out for longer, if we weren’t running out of money.”
He glanced at her, a flicker of worry in those dark pupils.
Perhaps he wasn’t as taciturn as he’d made himself out to be. Perhaps he needed only encouragement from someone he trusted, even a little, to talk at length.
“But of course your mother has had no cause to regret her decision,” she said.
“Actually, she regretted it almost as soon as she gave me permission, because someone sent her five quid in the mail, someone who said that he was an old friend of my father’s, wanting to do something decent for his widow and children. She always said it was an angel who sent it, because the men my father ran around with were no better than him. They took money from babes’ mouths to buy drink, and none of them would have given a single thought—let alone a sou—to some dead fool’s widow and children.”
Mysterious aid, eh? “Did you ever find out the identity of this angel?”
“No.” Johnny dusted off his hands. “Five pounds was a huge sum, but between rent, food, and my mother’s medicine, even with those five pounds, we’d have barely lasted through autumn. Winter would have been even more expensive, with coal to buy.”
He sighed. “Mr. Underwood became my sponsor in the nick of time.”
No indeed. Mr. Underwood took his time and became your sponsor at a moment of his choosing.
“Forgive my curiosity, Mr. Esposito, but how did your father die?”
Johnny rose. “We’re not entirely sure, but most likely he got drunk, fell, and hit the back of his head on the curb. His body was discovered only the next morning.”
“He fell backward?”
Charlotte didn’t have a great deal of experience with drunks, but the world would have far fewer sots if falling straight back was the usual mode of succumbing to an alcoholic stupor.
Johnny balled up the wrapping papers from his luncheon and lobbed the entire thing neatly into the nearest rubbish bin. He glanced at Charlotte, looking only a little bitter. “Have I ever mentioned that not long before my old man died, my mother became convinced he’d soon abandon us? I saw it in his eyes, too—he’d had enough. He was giving her less and less money and drinking more and more. And what he didn’t spend on drink, he kept in a pouch under a floorboard.”
He wiped a sleeve across his face. “I didn’t care how he died. All I cared was that we could at last use that money to buy some food. That for once, my little sister wouldn’t go to bed hungry.”
Dear Miss Holmes and Mrs. Hudson,
Unfortunately, I had to abandon my hired town house for a “bolt-hole” that Mr. UnderOverhill had prepared for me as a last resort. Please forgive me for not divulging its address—Mr. Overhill forbade that strictly.
It may not be a good idea for me to go to your hotel in person. But I’m desperate for help. May I propose a meeting at Pettifer’s Hotel?
Yours truly,
Marie Claiborne
P.S. I’m sorry for scratching out the proposed location. Mr. Overhill once mentioned that, in the course of his work, sometimes the most crucial information is sent separately from the rest. I will do that instead.
P.P.S. In that case I had better cover over my own name, too.
P.P.P.S. But if the wrong party gets their hands on this letter, they will know then to watch out for the next one from me. I really have no idea what I am doing, do I? Nevertheless, I must proceed.
Dear Miss Holmes and Mrs. Hudson,
This is that separate missive.
I anxiously await you four o’clock this afternoon at Pettifer’s Hotel. Ask for Mrs. Overhill.
Yours truly,
Mrs. Overhill
* * *
Mrs. Watson took three different hansom cabs. After she alit from each, she made sure to disappear for a few minutes, either by using the carriage lane behind a row of houses to emerge onto a different street, or by going into an establishment from the front and leaving via a service door.
What had happened? One moment they were speaking to some young people who boxed to supplement their income, the next Mrs. Claiborne had become frightened enough to flee.
Perhaps Mrs. Claiborne had been in no immediate danger and merely overreacted. Still, Mrs. Watson’s own heart raced. The temperature hovered steadily in the mid-sixties, yet she perspired. As she finally approached Pettifer’s Hotel, she felt as if she were only marginally tethered to this reality of an ordinary summer day, with pedestrians all around her, umbrellas hooked over elbows, hurrying toward their own destinations.
The hotel was the kind favored by solidly respectable country squires. Mrs. Watson, in a discreet grey velvet walking dress and an even more restrained toque that featured barely any trimming, could have blended into the wallpaper in the foyer.
There was indeed a private room reserved by a Mrs. Overhill. Mrs. Watson was quickly shown into a genteel, old-fashioned space, but it was empty. No sign of Mrs. Claiborne.
Mrs. Watson glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. Despite the labyrinthine route she’d taken, she had arrived a good quarter hour ahead of the appointment. She ordered the full tea service to arrive at four sharp, and asked the server to find out when Mrs. Claiborne had asked for the private room.
There was a post office not far from the hotel, and it was possible that Mrs. Claiborne had reserved the room after she had posted her letters to Miss Charlotte and Mrs. “Hudson.”
And then what? Had she gone back to the “bolt-hole” she’d mentioned? And there waited anxiously for time to pass, pacing back and forth in a bare, airless space?
The server returned at exactly four o’clock with tea, a plate of sandwiches, a plate of sliced Battenberg cake, and the intelligence that the room had been reserved in the morning.
Mrs. Claiborne herself, however, did not arrive at the stroke of the hour.
Mrs. Watson did not expect strict punctuality—times like these called for careful reconnaissance, not a rushed entrance. But when another ten minutes passed and still Mrs. Claiborne did not appear, she could no longer remain seated. She went to the window to look down to the street below, then to the door to listen for footsteps outside. Once she opened the door with hope, only to see a party being led to the room next door; another time it turned out to be a laden food trolley being pushed down the corridor.
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