The Case of the Missing Marquess Page 9

  I stared until I grew aware of hordes of indifferent city-dwellers brushing past me, going about their business. Then I took a deep breath, closed my mouth, swallowed, and turned my back to this curiously ominous sunset.

  Here in London, just as anywhere else, I told myself, the sun went down in the west. Therefore, forcing my flabbergasted limbs to move, I walked down a broad avenue leading in the opposite direction—for I wanted to go east, towards the used clothing stores, the docks, the poor streets. The East End.

  Within a few blocks I walked into narrow streets shadowed by crowded buildings. Behind me the sun sank. In the city night, no stars or moon shone. But swatches of yellow light from shop windows draped the pavement, seeming to drag down the intervening darkness all the blacker, darkness out of which passersby appeared like visions, vanishing again in a few steps. Like figures out of a dream again they appeared and disappeared on the corners, where gas street-lamps cast wan skirts of light.

  Or figures out of a nightmare. Rats darted in and out of the shadows, bold city rats that did not run away as I walked by. I tried not to look at them, tried to pretend they were not there. I tried not to stare at an unshaven man in a crimson cravat, a starveling boy with his clothing in rags, a great brawny man wearing a bloodied apron, a barefoot Gypsy woman on a corner—so there were Gypsies in London, too! But not the proud nomads of the country. This was a dirty beggar, all grimed like a chimney-sweep.

  This was London? Where were the theatres and the carriages, the jewelled ladies in fur wraps and evening gowns, the gold-studded gentlemen in white ties and cutaway tails?

  Instead, like a kind of walking doghouse, along came a pale man wearing sign-boards, front and back:

  For

  IRREPROACHABLE

  HAIR GLOSS

  Use

  Van Kempt’s

  Oil of

  Macassar

  Dirty children swirled around him, taunting, knocking his dented derby off his head. A capering girl shrieked at him, “Where do ye keep the mustard?” Evidently a great joke, for her mates laughed like little banshees.

  The dark streets rang with such noise, shopkeepers roaring at the street urchins, “Be off with you!” while wagons rattled past and a fishmonger cried, “Fresh haddock fer yer supper!” and sailors shouted greetings to one another. From an unswept doorway a stout woman shrieked, “Sarah! Willie!” I wondered if her children were tormenting the board-man. Meanwhile, folk brushed past me, chatting in vulgarly loud voices, and I walked faster, as if I could somehow escape.

  What with so many strange sights and so much commotion, small wonder I didn’t hear the footsteps following me.

  I did not notice until the night deepened and darkened—or so it seemed at first, but then I realised it was the streets themselves that had grown grimmer. No more shops gave light, only glaring public houses on the corners, their drunken noise spilling into the darkness. I saw a woman standing in a doorway with her face painted, red lips, white skin, black brows, and I guessed I was witnessing a lady of the night. In her tawdry low-cut gown she reeked so badly of gin that I could smell it even above the stench of her seldom-washed body. But she was not the only source of odour; the whole East End of London stank of boiled cabbage, coal smoke, dead fish along the nearby Thames, sewage in the gutters.

  And people. In the gutters.

  I saw a man lying drunk or sick. I saw children huddled together like puppies to sleep, and I realised they had no homes. My heart ached; I wanted to awaken those children and give them money to buy bread and meat pies. But I made myself walk on, lengthening my stride. Uneasy. Some sense of danger—

  A dark form crawled along the pavement in front of me.

  Crawled. On her hands and knees. Her bare feet dragging.

  I faltered to a halt, staring, struck motionless and witless by the sight of an old woman reduced to such wretchedness, with only a single torn and thread-bare dress inadequately covering her, no underpinnings beneath it. Nothing on her head, either, not even so much as a rag of cloth, and no hair. Only a mass of sores covered her scalp. I choked back a cry at the sight, and dully, creeping at a snail’s pace on her knuckles and her knees, she lifted her head a few inches to glance at me. I saw her eyes, pallid like gooseberries—

  But I had stood still a moment too long. Heavy footsteps sounded behind me.

  I leapt forward to flee, but it was too late. The footfalls rushed upon me. An iron grip grasped my arm. I started to scream, but a steely hand clamped over my mouth. Very close to my ear a deep voice growled, “If you move or cry out, I will kill you.”

  Terror froze me. Wide-eyed, staring into darkness, I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe. As I stood gasping, his grip left my arm and snaked around me, clasping both arms forcibly to my sides, pressing my back against a surface that might as well have been a stone wall had I not known it to be his chest. His hand left my mouth, but within an instant, before my trembling lips could shape a sound, in the dim night I saw the glint of steel. Long. Tapering to a point like a shard of ice. A knife blade.

  Dimly, also, I saw the hand that held the knife.

  A large hand in a kidskin glove of some tawny colour.

  “Where is he?” the man demanded, his tone most menacing.

  What? Where was who? I could not speak.

  “Where is Lord Tewksbury?”

  It made no sense. Why would a man in London be accosting me about the noble runaway? Who could know I had been in Belvidere?

  Then I remembered the face I had seen pressed against the glass, peering into the train compartment.

  “I will ask you once more, and once only,” he hissed. “Where is Viscount Tewksbury, Marquess of Basilwether?”

  It must by then have been past midnight. Shouts blurred by ale still rang from the public houses, along with bawdy off-key singing, but the cobblestones and pavements stood empty. What I could see of them. Anything could have lurked in the shadows. And this was not the sort of place where one could hope for help.

  “I—I, ah . . . ,” I managed to stammer, “I have no idea.”

  The knife blade flashed under my chin, where, through my high collar, I could feel its pressure against my throat. Gulping, I closed my eyes.

  “No games,” my captor warned. “You are on your way to him. Where is he?”

  “You are mistaken.” I tried to speak coolly, but my voice shook. “You are labouring under some absurd delusion. I know nothing of—”

  “Liar.” I felt murder in his arm muscles. The knife jumped, jerked in his hand, slashing at my throat, finding instead the whalebone of my collar. With what could have been my last breath I screamed. Twisting in the cutthroat’s grip, flailing, I lashed upwards and backwards with my carpet-bag, feeling it hit his face before it flew out of my grasp. He cursed fearsomely, but although his hold on me loosened, he did not let go. Shrieking, I felt his long blade stab at my side, strike my corset, then stab again, seeking a passageway to my flesh. Instead, it slit my dress, a long, ragged wound, as I tore away from him and ran.

  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 m
ore 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.

  CHAPTER THE TWELFTH

  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 follo
wed 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.