by M. J. Tjia
Amah lifts her skirt and runs along the narrow path. She can feel the jiggle of the beads and brooch in their box as her reticule swings against her side. Relief loosens her breathing when she sees the street ahead. A hansom cab passes the mouth of the alleyway and she’s just raising her arm to summon its driver when she’s grabbed from behind by her shoulders and slammed against a wall. Something heavy and hard crashes against the side of her head and she slumps to the ground. Pain rings in her ears, and she moans with each ragged inhalation.
“I said to knock her out.”
“What do you want me to do? Cave her head in?” someone whispers back. “She’ll die.”
Beneath the thumping ache, Amah’s head whirls. She rocks on her haunches, tries to drag herself to her feet. Her voice croaks when she tries to call out for help.
“Give me her shawl.”
Amah’s so dizzy she’s sure she will vomit. She collapses against the wall.
“Bind it tight around her mouth.”
Strong hands wrap the woollen shawl about Amah’s head, tying it tightly at the nape of her neck. She tries to push away but the knock to the head has left her feeling weak, disorientated. With a grunt, her assailant grips her around the waist and slings her over his shoulder.
CHAPTER 15
I lean right back into the cushions of my seat, trying to listen to what the American – what was his name again? – has to say. He is seated with his back to me and, although I can hear that twang of his, I can’t make out actual words. And whoever sits opposite him speaks too low for me to catch anything. What the hell is he doing in Soho? It’s a bit of a rich coincidence him being here. He must be connected in some way with what happened at the Dernier Livre. I scrape and scrape at the last of the pudding with my spoon as I puzzle over the possibilities. He wasn’t Somerscale’s secret contact, because that was the man with the black beard. But there must be some connection. Why else would he be here?
I think of the way he stuck so close to Violette and me. What had he known? What was he up to?
I cock my head, trying to drown out the rowdy clerks, the rumble of conversation, the clinking of cutlery against crockery. I strain to hear what the American is talking about. And who is he talking to? But the damned panelling is in the way and I can’t exactly poke my head around the side to look.
Once the waiter whisks past with a tray of dirty plates, I stuff the book back into my bag and prepare to leave my booth. I will follow him, ostensibly to pay my bill, and I will have a good look at the American’s ‘pal’ on my way.
Taking to my feet, I straighten my skirts and edge a step closer to the partition between the American’s booth and mine. A step further again. But the bench seat opposite the American is now empty. Damn. I sidle towards the back of the restaurant and find my waiter. I’m very tempted to look over my shoulder as I wait for my change, but I resist. Once the bill is settled, I turn and make my way sedately towards the street. As I pass the American I glance his way, and my eyes snag on his. I look away quickly, but not before I see a grin of recognition light his face.
When I enter my temporary home in Green’s Court, I peep into the sitting room on the way to my rooms. Mrs Modesto is seated in one of the chairs, reading.
“You seem to be very busy there, Mrs Modesto,” I say from the doorway.
She looks up. “You may join me, if you please, Miss Charters.”
On my way to the armchair next to hers I peer out the front window. I scan the laneway to see if anyone – the American in particular – has followed me home. Across the way I can see directly into someone’s living room: the lamp on a side board, an overstuffed sofa, square table and chairs, barren grate. A man enters the room and I take a step back behind the curtains.
“That is our neighbour.” Mrs Modesto doesn’t look up from her knitting. “We do not know his name. I think he is something secret. A – what you call it? – a man who does science.”
“What makes you think that?” I ask, glancing out the window again. The man has taken a seat on the sofa. The bald spot on the top of his head shines by the light of his lamp as he leans low to read from a thick sheaf of paper on his lap.
“Our charwoman sometimes clean for him too. Says he has a room full of bubbling things in glass. She says he is foreigner too. Like us.” Mrs Modesto closes her book, and I catch a glimpse of its title, Biblia Sacra. The Bible, perhaps?
I stare across the lane at the man again. Could he be the Prussian I am searching for?
He looks up and I draw back quickly, but it’s a knocking at his front door that has caught his attention. Someone stands down in the shadows. After a few moments, the front door opens and the dark silhouette slips inside.
Mrs Modesto pours something from a small jug and offers the cup to me. “Please. Drink with me.”
I take the chair next to hers. “Warm milk?”
She nods, a small smile lilting her lips.
I take a sip and almost splutter. Warm milk and gin. Not a favourite of mine. “Ooh, Mrs Modesto. You have tricked me.”
The smile slips from her face at the creak of the front door, and she gathers together her needles and wool. Mr Modesto walks in and, arms akimbo, says, “Knitting again, my dear? If you are so bored, why don’t you find the time to clean up this pigpen we live in? What Miss Charters here must think of us.”
I look about the sparse yet well-ordered room. “Oh, Mr Modesto, I beg to disagree. This house is as neat as a new pin.”
He ignores me. He runs a fingertip along the mantelpiece and tuts. “Don’t stay up so late, will you, Sofia? Perhaps you can get something useful done tomorrow.”
What a detestable man. I want to tell him that perhaps if he didn’t spend time drinking aperitifs at the Clover, he might find time to do some dusting himself. Which makes me think of when I saw him earlier in the evening. Not that much before the American entered the restaurant. Could it be…?
Mrs Modesto frowns over her knitting, but I think there is a slight quiver to her fingers.
“What is it you are knitting there, madam?” I ask her.
She holds up a blue bootie. “I make them for the – how you call them – babies back home. Babies with no parents.”
“Orphans?”
She nods. “There has been much unrest where I am from. It is very unsettling. Many orphans.”
“Unrest? Where is that?”
“I am from Venetia. My husband is from there too.”
“Ah, yes, there has been trouble in your parts, I understand. Quite a spate of rebellions, so I’ve heard.”
Mrs Modesto knits in a peculiar style, yarn in the wrong hand, the nose of the needles held low. Not at all like how I was taught back at school when we girls would cluster around Miss North, listening to her stories of the princes in the tower or poor Lady Jane Grey. I wonder what happened to the lopsided scarf I knitted, the one that seemed to become wider and wider the longer I worked on it.
Mrs Modesto ties off the bootie and tosses it into the basket on the floor by her chair. She takes a sip of her milk and gin. Someone shuffles above us, blows their nose. Several soft raindrops tap the window.
“Well, I might take this delicious nightcap with me and head off to bed. It’s been a long day.” I smile at the other woman, who murmurs goodnight but does not look up from where she loops fresh wool onto her knitting needle.
I grimace as I place the dreadful drink on the chest of drawers and rummage through my portmanteau for my flask of whisky. I also lift out my writing accoutrements and carry them into the tiny back room. Taking a seat at the desk, the chair is so low to the ground I feel like my knees are up about my ears. At this awkward angle, my writing is no better than a scrawl as I pen a report to Mrs White. I write of the man across the way, and how, apparently, he is a secretive scientist. I will have to find out if he is Prussian. I lift my head and look towards the road. His room, where he performs his experiments, might be directly opposite, and if something were to combust�
� I imagine the glass in the terrace doors blowing in, vicious shards lodging into the furniture, the walls, me. I shake my head and return to the letter. The biggest news I have regards the American. Mr Ripley, I now recall. Of course, I can’t be sure if this is his real name but this information will be of great interest to Mrs White. And for good measure I add the redoubtable Mr Modesto to my list of suspects. What does he do when he’s not mocking his poor wife? I seal the letter and slide it beneath the inkwell, ready to send in the morning. Not a bad start at all. This spying game suits me.
Turning my lantern low, I open the doors onto the terrace. Careful to not step too far, I light a cigarette and blow smoke towards the night sky. I puzzle for a few moments over Mr Ripley. What the hell is he doing here? I am quite certain he recognised me at the inn tonight, yet I am equally certain I must have imagined it. At the Dernier Livre he knew me as a man. Didn’t he?
CHAPTER 16
AMAH
Amah jerks awake. She has to blink three times, firmly, to confirm that her eyes are open but that she can’t see anything. She is almost totally immersed in darkness as though she has been lowered into the depths of a well. Only after several seconds do her eyes adjust so that she can discern a faint glimmer to her right; a very dim line of light across the floor, beneath what must be a door.
She rotates her head, side to side, trying to stretch out the painful crick in her neck. A cloth gag cuts into the corners of her mouth. Her shoulders and waist are bound to a hardback chair, her ankles tied fast to its legs. The side of her head still aches from where the man clubbed her and a sharp little headache pokes at her right temple. How could she have fallen asleep at such a time? Where was she? What time of day was it?
Amah had spent a good amount of time huddled on the floor of the buggy the man had thrown her into. She can’t be sure how long she’d lain there as the buggy trundled along. An hour? Two? It was difficult to be clear about time with the shawl muffling her eyes, her ears, although she could sense when the buggy’s wheels left the town’s even road surfaces to bump their way along dirt. Her assailants had kept her pinned to the floor with their feet, like she was a spaniel of some sort to warm their feet upon. And one had pressed the icy flank of a blade to her temple, told her to lie still.
Amah’s hands lie numb in her lap and she rubs them together. She pinches her fingertips, relieved when a wiry prickle signals the return of sensation. The rope tied about her wrists itches her skin and a cramp tightens her left thigh. The room is as chill as an icebox. As a coffin. As a graveyard plot.
“Don’t be so fanciful,” she says out loud, testing her voice.
When the buggy finally pulled up – Amah presumes in the middle of the previous evening, although she can’t be sure – and her assailants pulled her to the ground, she waggled her head so that the scarf slipped. Not that she could see much. The half-moon was hidden behind cloud, and a bramble, huge and gnarled, reached across the sky, screening all else. Her assailants marched her towards a low-set lodge. No fire or gaslight glowed from its windows and a cold draught swept through the hallway as they walked her towards the back of the house. She had tried to wrench herself free, to run out into night’s dark refuge, but the stern tip of the dagger was again pressed to her throat. They half carried her down the stone steps to the cellar and, after they tied her to the chair, left her alone. Amah doesn’t know how long ago. She finds it very disorientating being buried so far below, away from the sun’s regulating light or even a candle’s reassuring flicker.
She feels terribly exposed, pinned to the chair like a moth mounted in a glass case. She wonders where her bag is, where her jewels are. Was she attacked for her belongings? And if that were the case, why take her too?
It’s as black as pitch in the cellar and the dank air whispers against her throat, tickles the hair at the back of her neck. She shifts in her chair to break the silence that hums in her ears. The darkness presses in on her, flutters against her skin until her heart matches its beat. Something in the corner makes a faint scratching sound and Amah wonders if it’s a mouse. A memory – something her Chinese grandfather had once told her when he was in his cups – creeps into her mind, and the harder she tries to shut it out, the more surely it slips into her thoughts like a serpent into its nest. He’d whispered to her of ghosts that could transform into small creatures, into insects, into vermin. Ghosts that could slip through tiny crevices, scuttle up great heights before they transformed back into spirits that were hungry, for flesh, for life, for one’s soul. Amah lifts her feet as best she can from where they are bound, imagining the same spectre of her childhood – a faceless black void dressed in pale rags – crawling across the ground, brittle arm reaching for her.
Amah’s panting now, and it takes all her will to wrench her thoughts back to somewhere safe, peaceful. She closes her eyes and pictures an expanse of ocean, azure and calm, warmer than the leaden waters of Liverpool. She can smell the salt in the air, the sweet stink of overripe mango. Birds squawk and trill. And it’s sweltering, so warm her skin feels sticky, her limbs are heavy. Her mother strokes her cheeks, soothes her tears away with her thumbs.
Opening her eyes again Amah stares into the shadows. Is she alone in the house? Should she try to call out? From the little she could take in the evening before, the house seemed to be isolated, far from others. Even if she were to shout, would anyone hear? Perhaps she would only attract the attention of her kidnappers. Perhaps they have forgotten her existence and left her here to expire. Her tongue is dry against the cloth gag and her stomach feels hollow. She must find a way out. She can’t just sit here waiting to perish one way or another.
Twisting her hands, she tries to wriggle them free from their bind, but all she achieves is a slight loosening – not enough to slide free – and terribly chafed wrists. She strains against the rope, wondering if it is blood or sweat that dampens the back of her hands. She gives up, vexation rubbing hot against her chest. She catches sight of the faint glimmer under the doorway again. She’ll get herself to the door. Then decide what to do.
Amah clenches her calves against the chair legs and, with toes pushed to the ground, eases the chair forward. With each short scrape, she waits, listens for a response from overhead. It’s not until she’s halfway across the space that she hears footsteps cross the floorboards above. Her heart quickens as the footsteps pause. A pang of nauseous dread sweeps over her as the footsteps descend the steps towards her.
CHAPTER 17
First thing the next morning I slip out to send my letter to Mrs White, which means I am a bit late to the breakfast table and have missed both Mr Beveridge and Miss Haven. This is of no matter to me as I’ve decided to spend the morning watching Mr Modesto and the house across the way. It’s quite awful having to sit through Mr Modesto slurping up egg yolk and herring, so much so that I only manage to nibble on a piece of toast myself. I notice Mrs Modesto doesn’t eat anything at all, only sips from a cup of coffee. She is knitting again. A striped bonnet this time. I don’t admire how she’s mixed the lilac, black, grey and green.
Mr Modesto rises to his feet. “You still have your list of tasks for the day, Sofia?” he says to his wife. “I am just checking, you see, because often you forget. I will use Miss Charters here as my witness that I have reminded you.”
I smile up at the detestable man, wondering if I could possibly slip something in his tea at some time. Not to kill him, mind you, just cause maximum discomfort for a night or two.
Standing too, I say, “Yes, I believe I have had enough. Thank you, Mrs Modesto, for breakfast.” I make my way slowly up to my room, keeping an ear out for Mr Modesto’s movements. Once in my room, I pull gloves and a bonnet on and listen to the household through a crack in the door. Mrs Modesto murmurs instructions to the housemaid as they clear the dining room, and water slops in the bucket as the charwoman climbs the stairs. It’s not long before firm footsteps approach the front door, and keys clink as they are drawn from a pocket. Slipp
ing onto the landing, I race down the stairs and reach the front hallway just as the front door clicks shut. I wait four toe taps and then I too open the front door and step out onto the pavement. Mr Modesto heads off in the direction of Brewer Street.
The day is clear, yet quite chilly and I wish I’d brought along a shawl. Too late to turn back now though. I maintain a good distance behind Mr Modesto, ready to fling myself into the closest shop should he turn and see me. I pass an organ grinder who tips his hat to me. The monkey on his shoulder wears a red coat and a tiny captain’s cap, and I am sorely tempted to stop and pat the dear creature but Mr Modesto has already turned right at the next corner. One more turn to the left and he makes his way to a rather scrappy-looking park. He follows a dirt path that meanders through the middle of the grass and takes a seat on a bench. I hurry across the road to watch him from the shops that line the road opposite to the park entrance. When I look over at him again, he’s just pulling a folded newspaper from his pocket, which he spreads out to read.
Well. That would be right. He’s taken himself off for some nice peaceful reading time, while he’s left all the chores to the missus. I keep an eye on him as I linger over a haberdasher’s stall. I’ve chosen two rolls of pink ribbon, some lace edging and five faux-shell buttons when a woman, garish green skirt swaying, makes her way up the park path towards Modesto. He hails her, tucking the newspaper under one arm and taking her hand in his other. Hastily paying the stall keeper, I run across the road and follow them through the park. They step briskly and seem to be keeping up a lively banter. Even when she glances up at Modesto, I can’t see her face for all the brash flowers and furbelows that decorate her hat. They walk through the gates on the other side of the park and turning right, they cross the road and disappear into a tall, rather ugly, building. As I approach, I read the sign above the doors. Supreme Hotel.