The Talking Board

by Issy Brooke

  “No, no. Thank you for everything.”

  Marianne calmed herself down. Her father did sometimes visit London but he had never done so secretly before – that was the problem, in Marianne’s eyes. But his nurse was right. And there was nothing she could do.

  She went into the parlour with her head held high, and looked around with as much of a supercilious air as she could manage. If none of the men actually wanted to marry her, then there was nothing to do done, surely? She wondered how to make herself thoroughly unpleasant without angering Mrs Davenport.

  She was introduced to Mr Thorne, who turned out to be a jolly man, tall and dark, with a deep and throaty laugh. In fact she never once saw any other emotion but mirth on his face, and after a while began to suspect it was chemically induced.

  Perhaps she could ask what he was imbibing, and procure some for her father. Or herself.

  The other guests arrived slowly; Mr Tipton, Mr Bannerjee, and Mr Smith, who was as forgettable as his name. Only Mr Tipton held any attraction for her, and that was slight.

  There were a few others, too, otherwise it would have looked far too much like an auction of Marianne’s spinsterhood. The dinner party had been put together with only a few weeks’ notice – Mrs Davenport must have planned it from the very beginning. So there were Mr and Mrs Jenkins, who turned up to most things, and the vicar and his wife, the Forsters.

  It was the first time that Marianne had seen Price Claverdon for a few days, except at silent breakfasts. He looked pained. Clearly, the issues of household economy were wearing on him, too. And he didn’t feel as if he had the authority to tell his wife’s mother to leave, according to Phoebe.

  Ha, Marianne thought. And we’re the weaker sex who supposedly can’t suffocate an old lady to death?

  There were fifteen minutes to wait until they were to be called into the dining room. Marianne was clock-watching as she politely listened to Mr Smith tell her all about the manufacture of cotton cloth. At least once they were at the table, she would have something else to occupy herself with. She itched to be away from this place, tracking down Louisa Newman, and avenging Miss Dorothea. And finding her father, as well. He had to be home before midnight, surely.

  “Mm – are you expecting another guest?” Mr Smith asked.

  “What? Oh. No. Sorry. You were telling me of the terrible effect the labour laws are having on your productivity...” she said, feeling absolutely no sympathy at all for the man and his overworked factory staff, especially the children.

  “You are glancing to the door.”

  “I ... am sorry. I suffer from various disorders and complaints,” she said. “One of them means I often have to dart away and attend to ... my ailment. This has led me to be constantly aware of my exits. I am sure you understand.” She smiled sweetly and watched his imagination come up with a dozen different things that she might be alluding to. None were pleasant, judging by the creases on his cheeks as his mouth pulled down.

  Good, she thought. He will hardly propose to me now.

  The little knot of people standing by the door suddenly all turned, as one, to face it. Marianne craned her neck to see what the matter was. Mr Smith stood up, and put one hand out to Marianne, as if to stop her, so she immediately stood up as well.

  “Miss Starr, please. There is a ruffian outside, shouting.”

  “Excellent.” A distraction, she thought. She went towards the consternation. The door to the hallway was now open, and Mr Barrington was trying to calm down a wild, arm-flailing figure. The house steward spotted Marianne and jerked his head. “It’s your friend again. Bit of a habit, this.”

  Mrs Davenport caught Marianne’s arm as she headed towards the little scene at the bottom of the stairs.

  “You must let me go!” Marianne said. “He is no ruffian. That’s my friend, Simeon. He has been here before.”

  “He is quite clearly not an appropriate acquaintance and must be dropped immediately.” Mrs Davenport looked back into the room. “Do any of you gentleman have a firearm?”

  “No one is to shoot Simeon! Don’t be ridiculous.” Marianne shook herself free and raced over to her friend. He was dressed in trousers that didn’t match his oversized suit jacket, with his yellowing shirt untucked and his hair wild about his eyes. “Come away. Let us talk outside.”

  “Marianne!” Mrs Davenport commanded. “Come back here.”

  She ignored it; she was not a dog to be ordered about like that. Marianne got hold of Simeon’s arm and Mr Barrington hauled on the other, and together they half-lifted him out of the house and onto the front steps. It was already getting dark. “Thank you, Mr Barrington.”

  “A pleasure, miss. I fear you might be in trouble, however.”

  “Perhaps so, but it will give you all something to gossip about.”

  He almost smiled. “We have enough of our own problems.”

  “I know. But I am going to do my best to solve them. There is one way out of this.”

  “Don’t marry any of them. Not on our behalf. We’ve been talking, you know.” Mr Barrington hesitated as he was about to leave them on the step. “Please, miss. Consider your own happiness. She can’t stay here forever.” He dropped his voice. “And you know about poisons...”

  “Not you, too! I shall pretend I did not hear that.”

  He slipped away inside. She heard shouting and some hysterical crying, abruptly cut off when the heavy door slammed shut.

  “Now, Simeon, what is all this about? And thank you, by the way, from saving me from an interminable evening of potential marriage proposals.”

  “You won’t be thanking me in a moment, when you hear why I am here.”

  “Tell me. Honestly, it cannot be worse than marriage to Mr Smith and his factory full of child slaves. Is it Tobias? Is he all right?”

  “He is fine. No, it is much worse. I am here concerning your father.”

  “Oh God. My father is always concerning. What has he done? Is he at your place? Thank goodness.”

  “He was but he is not there now. He came to see me, demanding to know the details of the Clay Brothers. How did he even know about that?”

  “I told him. I didn’t think he was listening, to be honest.”

  Simeon picked compulsively at his fingernails and pulled a long strip of skin away from the side of his thumb. “He shook me.”

  “I know he can be overbearing.”

  “No, I mean, he picked me up and shook me. Physically shook me. My teeth rattled. I have bruises. He is strong. Tobias went to hide in a cabinet and got himself stuck. I don’t think he was expecting the false back to pop open.”

  “But what of my father?”

  “He wanted to know all the details so he could find them. The brothers. I told them the address was fake, and he got very angry and said he was going to use his contacts to track them down. He said he had to make things right.”

  “But why you? Why is he doing this at all?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “And what about Tobias?”

  Simeon clapped his hands to his mouth. “He’s probably still in the cabinet. Unless he has found the lever to release the mechanism.”

  “Go home, right now. Look,” she said, “I’ll pay for a cab, if you can find one. Wait here.” She ran around the side of the house and entered by the scullery door, pushing past Nettie as she hurled herself along the cold corridors at the back, the secret ways used the servants to pass invisibly through the warren of a house. She grabbed the very last of her funds and came back to Simeon, panting and sweating. Her good green dress was not made for exertion.

  “Take this, and use it in whatever way you can, to get back to your rooms as quickly as possible. See to Tobias. I hope that he is all right. Stay inside. Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll sort my father out.”

  “But you don’t know where he has gone!”

  “He said he was going to use his contacts. Well,” she said with a firm air. “I am going to use mine.”

 
; REASSURING SIMEON WAS one thing. She had managed to hide her fear and panic from him, and he seemed a little calmer as he left, rushing off into the night. He was relieved that he had passed on the message, and therefore the responsibility of fixing things was no longer his.

  She stood on the stone steps with the noise and the chaos of the house behind her muffled by the door. She was separate from it and that was both a comfort and a terror. There was a gas lamp up high to her right and she didn’t want to step out of its pool of light.

  But her father was out there, marauding around London, terrifying her friends and possibly ill, as his brain-fevers grew more severe. She ran through her options.

  She could go to the theatre that the Clay brothers had been working at, and ask the manager or some staff to give her information. Then what? Go on alone, intercept her father, and bring him home?

  It sounded fine in principle. But the night was creeping on. She was a woman of lower-middling standing. She could walk alone, but she would not walk at night without inviting comment and abuse. She had a small pistol but what could that do if she were surrounded by a ring of men? Would she shoot them all?

  She could take a hint from popular novels, the sort she devoured from the circulating libraries, where the doughty heroines took up disguises. She had done so herself, for another case. But what disguise could let a woman pass in the rough streets? Only the disguise of a man. And she didn’t think she could pull that off convincingly. Men walked differently, talked differently. She could not hope to adjust her gait, used as she was to years of tiny hobbling steps. She could not stride with a masculine confidence. She could try, but she knew she would fail. If it were full winter, she could hide herself in a cloak. In the hinterlands of autumn, that would simply draw attention to her.

  She scuffed her foot against the step in frustration. She had to act. But she could not act alone. She half-considered turning back into the house and asking Mr Barrington to accompany her. He was small and round and would possibly be of use if she bowled him at people, like a large ball, to scatter anyone who got in their way.

  No. She knew of one person, and one person only, who could possibly have the skills and the willingness to help her in this kind of matter.

  She remembered his address. He took rooms in an apparently respectable house, retaining a daily girl and a man servant too, and had worked on private business for Lord Hazelstone, amongst others. He was outwardly a gentleman.

  But Jack Monahan was nothing of the sort.

  She didn’t want to get in touch with him.

  Yet he was exactly who she needed now.

  Fourteen

  Thank goodness there were frequent trains criss-crossing the whole of the South East of England. She was in London within thirty minutes, but she stepped away from the train station and into a different world. It was still London: but at night.

  She hailed a cab and directed him to Jack’s street. She felt a curious anticipation rise in her throat and her stomach fluttered with nerves. She had vowed never to cross Jack Monahan’s path again, and he hadn’t seemed too bothered about that. He was a cocky, arrogant, infuriating man. Yet she felt strangely concerned about him, too. Almost maternal, in a way, or fraternal perhaps; he would have made an ideal older brother.

  She knocked at the door and the housekeeper answered. She did not recognise Marianne until she spoke.

  “Mrs Hathaway? How lovely to see you again. It is Miss Starr. Might Mr Monahan be available?”

  “Really? I mean, of course. It’s you ... I remember you. Won’t you step inside? I’ll call him.” Mrs Hathaway was shaking her head as she turned away, dismissing Marianne as now some tragic fallen woman. She waited in the hallway. A smell of boiled mutton came rolling from a distant room. Mrs Hathaway came back down the stairs.

  “He says that you are to go on up. First door that you see. Hmm. We are a respectable house but he assures me you won’t be here on anything other than business. Might I suggest, then, that in future you stick to business hours? I do not want the neighbours to talk.”

  Suitably reprimanded, Marianne went upstairs, feeling more nervous by the minute, but also affronted at Mrs Hathaway’s insinuations.

  When she reached the landing, Jack Monahan was waiting for her, leaning on the doorframe of his open door. He was dressed for an evening at home, in his shirtsleeves and loose jacket, and didn’t have anything on his feet except for holed socks. He grinned in a triumphant way, like he’d won something.

  She felt immediately defensive, and vulnerable. Was visiting a man like this, alone in his house, any better than wandering the streets? No. Not really. At least no one knew that she was here. That was actually a positive though it ought not to have been.

  Yet for all his louche air, she trusted him.

  “Oh, Marianne, what a delight it is to see you again! You should have sent word ahead.”

  “So that you could put some shoes on?”

  “So that I could have had better wine to offer you. Please do step inside.”

  “This is not a social call.”

  “It is nearly eight o’clock. If it is business, I can only imagine what business that might be, and you have sadly fallen in the world.”

  “No, it is not really business, either. I need help.”

  “You need wine. Here.”

  She followed him into his room. He thrust a glass at her, and motioned for her to sit down. His room was remarkably comfortable, furnished in strong male shades of brown and deep red. There was a crackling fire in the grate, something that Marianne had missed under the strict reign of Mrs Davenport’s economy. She sipped at the wine, trying to absorb its confidence but not the mind-numbing effects, and admired the hunting scenes adorning his walls.

  “So, how can I help you?” he asked, and he looked so punchable and smug that for a moment she regretted coming at all.

  “You know most people in London,” she said. She didn’t bother with niceties or anything that would waste time or potentially distract the conversation from its purpose. “I have an issue with my father. He is on the warpath and he is out, on his own somewhere in London, intending to challenge two brothers. They might not be brothers, actually, but they perform illusions as the Marvellous Brothers Clay.”

  “Go on.”

  “This is awkward. Forgive me. My friend Simeon – do you remember him?”

  “I do. Pale sort of chap. Needs a meal and a night out, if you know what I mean.”

  “I hope I do not. Well, he built a magical cabinet for these men, who took off with the cabinet and his money.”

  “How on earth does this involve your father?”

  “I am not entirely sure,” she admitted. “I had loaned some money to Simeon to make this cabinet, and this has left me out of pocket somewhat, due to ... other circumstances, which I won’t go into. Suffice it to say that I believe my father to have taken up the cudgel, as it were, when he heard of this, and he has gone off to track these men down, in order to obtain the money owing to Simeon – and to me.”

  “Ahh.” Jack nodded, and crossed his legs, letting his foot dangle and bob. He was drinking whisky, not wine, and he drank it slowly, savouring the flavour and aroma. “Well, unfortunately, flattered though I am that you have come to me, I do not know anything about these brothers. I have not heard of them. I do not frequent stage shows, myself. Well, not those kind of shows. Finish your wine; I can take you to my kind of show, if you like.”

  “I would rather not. It does not matter that you don’t know about the brothers. I didn’t expect you to. I simply need a man to come with me when I speak to the theatre staff. I have to go now, tonight, to stop my father before he does something that might involve the police. Or worse. First, then, I need to find him, and the theatre manager is the only chance I have.”

  “You want me to be your chaperone.”

  “I do. Please.”

  “No, but thank you for the invitation.”

  “What can I offer you, th
at might induce you to help me?”

  He laughed. “You can’t pay me; you’ve admitted that.”

  “How are you working at the moment?” she asked him, bluntly. “You know that I can perhaps influence things, through my sister and her husband; even through my father.”

  He looked at her with condescension. “It is not quite the influence that I need, but thank you all the same. More wine? How is the fog tonight?”

  “Thick and cloying, much like you.”

  “Ouch. All because you have nothing that I need or want. Well...”

  “Oh, stop that.” But she accepted more wine. He topped up his own glass with whisky while he was at it. When he settled himself back by the fire, she asked, “What do you want, more than anything in the world?”

  “There’s a question. You first. What do you want?”

  “Freedom.”

  “Pfft. That’s a woolly concept. You are free. Do you work in a factory? Are you in a sanatorium? Do you labour in a mine? Have you twenty-seven children and a drunkard for a husband? You are free, Marianne.”

  She took a gulp of wine that was rather too large. “Freedom to live in my own place, with my own money, and freedom from interference from others.”

  “Oh, that kind of life? I have it and I can tell you this: it’s lonely. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  “I need to try it. Maybe it will suit me, maybe it won’t. So, I have told you my dream. And yours?”

  “I just alluded to it,” he said, turning away to gaze into the fire. Maybe her honesty had loosened his tongue – along with the whisky. “This freedom is wearing on me. I want a wife.”

  She winced. “Look, Jack, I do like you but...”

  “Oh, God, not you!” he spluttered, laughing. “Sorry, Marianne, I was not angling into a proposal in any way. You have made your feelings perfectly plain and anyway, you would make a poor wife. I would know you were chafing, longing for freedom all the time, after all!”

  “Oh. Oh, I see. Good.”