A Ruse of Shadows, page 18
Sharp boy. “She claimed that although she hadn’t seen him in six weeks, communications from him did not cease altogether until slightly less than three weeks ago. And he was, until then, most reliable at dispatching news of his well-being.”
Charlotte took off the spectacles she wore for the role and polished them with her handkerchief. “That’s my reason for not inquiring into his disappearance earlier. What about you? What has made you into an ardent housebreaker these last few days?”
Mumble began to connect the dots on the vellum, dividing it into thin segments. “Mr. Herrinmore, I am Roma. What makes you think I would admit to any charges that might get me dragged to the nearest police station to answer questions?”
His reaction was not unanticipated. “Let’s find some less sensitive topics of discussion then. I was given the addresses to those two places in St. John’s Wood. How do you know about them?”
“Maybe Mr. Underwood told me about them.”
“Even the second one, which was acquired long after he disappeared from view?”
“Sponsors have mysterious ways.”
He was neither nervous nor hostile but simply less than forthcoming—Charlotte suspected that he would have been even less cooperative had she not found that loop of hair from Jessie’s ornament. She tried a different tack. “Have you ever seen his mistress?”
Mumble lifted the vellum and began cutting along the lines he had drawn. “I once saw a hackney stop in front of Johnny’s place. The cabbie accepted a large basket from the passenger and carried it to Johnny’s front door. By the time someone answered the door, the carriage was already driving away, but I happened to be standing near the window and saw a woman look out from the carriage.”
“What did she look like?”
“Dark hair. Good-looking. In her thirties.”
Charlotte nodded. “What are the vellum ribbons you’re cutting for?”
“To use as lacing to strengthen a large book’s spine.”
“And were you and Miss Ferguson at or near Pettifer’s Hotel yesterday afternoon?”
“We passed in front of it. The hotel recently began to acquire bread from the tea shop where Jessie works. Since we were already out and about, she wanted to show me the fancy place that is now serving bread she helped to bake.”
“And afterwards, did you go back to either of the mistress’s places again?”
“I shall not dignify that with an answer, Mr. Herrinmore.”
“Very well, Mr. Waters.” Charlotte set her spectacles back on her nose. “I’ll leave you to your work and show myself out.”
He rose. “I’ll need to latch the door after you.”
As he opened the front door to let her out, he said, “I still don’t believe you, Mr. Herrinmore. You are not who you say you are. And I very much doubt that the one who sent you is in fact a friend of Mr. Underwood’s.”
Charlotte looked back. “That is an odd sentiment to express, Mr. Waters. Are you searching for Mr. Underwood as a friend?”
Mumble blinked.
Charlotte marched away.
* * *
At various points in the excavation process, the woman had been the kicker, the bagger, and the trammer. The kicker, lying on a plank slanted at a forty-five-degree angle, drove a kicking iron into the clay ahead with their feet; the bagger swept up the loosened material into bags; the trammer then placed the bags onto a cart that rode on wooden rails placed on the floor of the tunnel, and pushed the cart out until it reached a point where the displaced earth could be removed and disposed of.
Every single position entailed cramped and laborious work, all undertaken under complete silence, whenever possible. At the end of every shift, measurements were taken and retaken. Were they still on the predetermined path? Had there been any deviation? Success depended on absolute accuracy; anything less would see them emerge in the wrong place.
Wrong and deadly.
That hour of reckoning was drawing nigh. They had finished the slanting upward portion of the excavation and were now digging straight up.
Most of the digging had been done by the day crew—the din of a busy thoroughfare allowed them to advance faster, rougher. But now they worked at night, in the hope that their destination would be as empty as possible.
Her hands perspired inside her gloves. Her shoulders ached. And her neck felt like a stem that had been twisted this way and that once too often, barely able to hold up her head in this space that forced her to work at a contorted angle.
The candle near her feet flickered. She almost wished it would go out—that would force them to leave. But no, the candle burned on, its flame feeble yet steady.
She lifted her trowel. Dirt fell. The bagger swept everything up soundlessly. She took another breath. The candle must be lying. The air must be oxygen-deficient. Why else would she feel light-headed—surely not from fear alone?
In the silence, the noise of metal on stone was an explosion. She stilled. The bagger emitted a soft gasp.
So soon—too soon. She was not ready. But they had reached the very lowest level of the structure they had been aiming for.
It was as simple as that.
* * *
“My dear, do you remember a time when you broke into places—or attempted to, at least—and I merely stayed home and fretted?” whispered Mrs. Watson. “Now look at me.”
It was almost exactly a year ago that Miss Charlotte performed her first feat of breaking and entering—which had gone none too well. Afterward she’d had to endure a lecture from Mrs. Watson concerning risks that one ought not to take.
Tonight, the two women had been lounging in the parlor of their hotel suite, having a cup of tea before bed, when Miss Charlotte had risen and ambled to the window. “A fog has rolled in.”
Mrs. Watson sat up straighter. “And?”
“And I’ve been asking myself why Mumble and Jessie were so interested in Mrs. Claiborne’s houses. At first I only wondered what they might know that we don’t, and then it occurred to me—”
She turned around. “Ma’am, where do you suppose Mr. Underwood would be safest now, if he were still in London?”
Mrs. Watson stared at the girl a moment. “You mean, at one of Mrs. Claiborne’s houses?”
“To be sure there could still be other parties looking for Mr. Underwood, but two seems about the right number. We represent Lord Bancroft, and Mumble and Jessie, possibly an enemy of his. And if both parties have already searched these houses from top to bottom—”
Mrs. Watson was on her feet. “Then the houses become, for the moment at least, ideal shelters for Mr. Underwood!”
“I was planning to test that hypothesis later, in a few days, but”—Miss Charlotte gestured toward the obscured street outside the window—“a fog has rolled in.”
And there was no better time for breaking and entering than under a thick blanket of London fog.
So here they were. They had already been to the villa, where they’d found no trace of Mr. Underwood. This made Mrs. Watson more nervous about the town house. Since they still had the key for the villa, their entry had been technically legal. At the town house, however, Miss Charlotte had picked the locks to the mews and the back door.
Mrs. Watson’s derringer was in her pocket. In her hand she clutched her favorite weighted umbrella, almost as slender as a walking stick. If Mr. Underwood wasn’t at the villa, then there was a greater chance he was here instead.
They went through the entire house, from the attic to the basement. And the only thing Miss Charlotte could be sure hadn’t been there earlier was a handful of advertisements and circulars that had been pushed through the mail slot on the front door.
“If Mumble and Jessie have been here, they have been very careful and disturbed nothing,” said Miss Charlotte, her expression pensive.
Mrs. Watson was disappointed that they hadn’t uncovered anything, but she was also, deep down, relieved. Mr. Underwood was a man who did not want to be found, and she was not confident they could have left the house unscathed if he had been on hand.
“But there is one place we haven’t looked at yet,” added Miss Charlotte.
That place was the coal cellar.
The town house, as was often the case, had a set of stairs beside the front door, leading down to the basement service entrance. The space was enclosed by a wrought iron fence. From the service door, the cellar was directly opposite on the other side of the enclosed space, its interior entirely under the street.
Fog swirled damply around Mrs. Watson’s face. The vapors smelled of rotten eggs and standing water that had started to scum over. She waved a hand in front of herself and whispered, “But surely Mr. Underwood couldn’t stay in there.”
It was a dark, unfinished space with no ventilation. If Mr. Underwood was running for his life and had police dogs chasing after him, then perhaps the coal cellar might not be the worst place to hide until the coast cleared. But was he facing that kind of danger?
Miss Charlotte went to work on the padlock. But only a moment later, she straightened. “The lock is jammed. It looks as if a key was broken off inside.”
Mrs. Watson’s blood pulsed. “And that wasn’t the case last night?”
“No. Last night Lord Ingram picked this lock in less time than it would have taken me to eat a biscuit.”
“What do we do?”
“I suppose we could drop matches from the hatch on the pavement, but the hatch would not be easy to lift up.”
Coal cellars under the street usually had an opening on top for replenishing coal, but the hole was blocked by a heavy metal cover that fitted exactly flush to the opening and exactly flush to the street, which was highly challenging to remove if one didn’t already have access to the coal cellar underneath.
“Let’s find Lawson,” suggested Miss Charlotte.
Lawson had driven them to St. John’s Wood and parked several streets away. They found him exactly where they had left him. Alas, he didn’t have bolt cutters, but in the boot of the carriage he did have screwdrivers.
Back at the town house, Miss Charlotte set to work, loosening the hasp on the coal cellar door. It took some time, as the screws had rusted in place. But as soon as she had detached the hasp from the doorframe, the padlock became merely a decoration.
Mrs. Watson’s heart thundered. Miss Charlotte had investigated a number of unnatural deaths. Yet somehow, in all this time, Mrs. Watson had never seen the remains of a victim, let alone discovered one.
And she did not want to. Incoherently, she prayed that the jammed lock had resulted from a simple lock-picking accident.
Miss Charlotte pulled open the door and shone her pocket lantern into the stygian interior.
“Do you see anything?” Mrs. Watson barely got the words out.
Miss Charlotte did not answer but struck a match and tossed it inside.
Mrs. Watson stopped breathing.
There, against the far wall of the largely empty coal cellar, lay a roll of carpet.
Mrs. Claiborne? Surely not! Mrs. Watson tried to remind herself that she didn’t believe Mrs. Claiborne entirely, not even above half.
And yet…
Had the hapless girl been caught just when she was beginning to feel safe? But who wanted her dead?
Miss Charlotte stepped into the cellar, her footsteps gritty upon the few inches of coal remaining on the floor. Reflexively, Mrs. Watson followed, almost not feeling the chunks of fossil fuel poking into the soles of her shoes.
Maybe she was being far too morbid. Maybe there was no cadaver here at all, merely some loot that had been conveniently stashed away. Maybe—
The carpet had already unrolled somewhat in transit. Miss Charlotte pulled at the edge still caught under the weight of whatever it hid.
The edge did not budge. Miss Charlotte yanked again, again it did not budge.
Mrs. Watson bit the inside of her lip, set down the pocket lantern she held, and joined Miss Charlotte. They each took one side of the carpet edge and pulled.
The carpet edge gave and flapped back.
And Mrs. Watson was looking not at a lovely young woman, taken before her time, but a middle-aged man she’d never seen before, his eyes open, his lips slack, a look of sorrow and regret on his grey lifeless face.
In horror, she looked toward Miss Charlotte, who murmured, “I see we’ve found Mr. Underwood.”
Seventeen
The interrogation
Chief Inspector Talbot was silent for some time. “Miss Holmes, I find your account questionable. It seems much more likely that you were coerced into cooperating with Lord Bancroft. What did he do? Did he, for example, threaten the safety of your sister Miss Bernadine Holmes?”
Treadles, who had been writing furiously to record the interview, nearly tore through the page with the steel nib of his fountain pen. He looked up at Miss Holmes. She had told him that she and Lord Ingram had anticipated problems. Was this the problem that they had anticipated? But if she had been prepared, how had the situation turned so unwieldy?
She got up and rang for a pitcher of lemonade. Then she sat down and adjusted her cuffs. Her sleeves were three-quarter length, the cuffs trimmed with large, dusky pink rosettes. “Chief Inspector, I may be a fallen woman in the eyes of the world, exiled to a scabrous wilderness, but I am not without friends. What makes you think that if my sister was in danger I couldn’t have mounted a rescue?”
“So did you?” Talbot sounded genuinely curious.
Their hostess—and chief suspect—smiled slightly. “Has anyone ever told you, Chief Inspector, that after Lord Bancroft was confined to Ravensmere, Lord Ingram sent him wine and dessert on multiple occasions, knowing that his brother was a gourmet whose palate was tormented by the indifferent cuisine at that genteel prison?”
The digression caught Treadles by surprise; even Chief Inspector Talbot seemed unsure how to respond. His thumb traveled up and down along the handle of his teacup. “No, I have not been made aware of that.”
“You can find out easily enough from the records at Ravensmere. If Lord Ingram can extend such grace to a brother who nearly caused him grievous harm, why should I not bestir myself a little when the same brother feared for his life?”
But had Lord Ingram been, in truth, offering grace to Lord Bancroft? To the recipient, the very desirable wine and dessert could have been a boon, a moment of joy in the dreariest stretch of his life. But it could also have been a taunt, the brevity of that intense sumptuousness a harsh light on the intolerable mediocrity of everything else he would have to choke down for months to come.
“You need not dig for more sinister reasons for my cooperation, Chief Inspector,” continued Miss Holmes. “And if you must, you may attribute it to a woman’s concern for her lover. The feelings between the Ashburton brothers are complicated, but I’m sure Lord Ingram would take solace in the fact that I tried to help Lord Bancroft, even if I wasn’t successful.”
Chief Inspector Talbot set down his teacup and tented his fingertips together. “Very well. So you agreed to aid Lord Bancroft. Please continue.”
Treadles didn’t know whether he ought to relax a little or brace himself for worse to come. He tried to concentrate on his note-taking.
“Lord Bancroft’s greatest need was to reestablish contact with Mr. Underwood, his chief lieutenant. But Mr. Underwood, according to his mistress, was missing,” said Miss Holmes. “Lord Bancroft told me that Mr. Underwood was a boxing aficionado, and that I might find his whereabouts if I spoke to those he knew in that context.
“And that was what I set out to do. I found the gymnasium where Mr. Underwood’s boxers had trained. I spoke to the boxers. I spoke to the accountant via whom he paid the boxers. But their knowledge of him was strictly limited to the role he played in their lives. They didn’t know his origins, his livelihood, or even his address—except for the accountant, I suppose, who was supplied with an outmoded one.
“In this regard, my efforts, though conscientious, amounted to an unqualified failure. I never saw hide or hair of Mr. Underwood, dead or alive.”
“What about his mistress?”
Treadles’s stomach twisted.
With an apologetic look in his direction, Miss Holmes said, “Mrs. Claiborne? Yes, we did find her.”
Eighteen
Four days ago
Charlotte stood by the manor at Ravensmere, looking at the back wall of the garden. Elsewhere the garden wall was seven feet high, but behind the manor, its height rose to a solid eleven feet.
She turned around and studied the iron bars outside the windows. The bars were each half an inch thick, spaced three inches apart. Unlike prison bars, installed directly into the masonry of the window opening, here at least some thought had been given to appearance. At each window, the bars bowed out and formed a decorative grille that was bolted at its four corners into the exterior of the manor.
“What brought you here today, Miss Holmes?” came Lord Bancroft’s voice.
He wore the same unfortunate orange-brown suit—or perhaps a different one cut in the exact same fashion—and he did not appear remotely pleased to see her.
But he did extend his arm, and after a moment she placed her gloved hand on his sleeve. They strolled around the periphery of the small side garden in which more privileged prisoners were allowed to take their daily exercise.
“I found Mr. Underwood and he is dead,” she murmured, once the guards were far away enough.
Lord Bancroft’s hand balled into a fist—so forcefully that the leather of his glove rasped. “How?”
“Shot in the back. I found him in the coal cellar of Mrs. Claiborne’s new place. I would say that at the time he’d been dead less than twenty-four hours—a closer estimate is beyond my expertise.”
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