by Y. S. Lee
James thought back to his meeting with Mr. Chen and again revised his ideas. Mr. Chen had no need to ransack his own office. Whatever he needed, he could have found. So why destroy the room? To make it look like something else? Or was it someone else entirely? Head whirling, he bent to examine a dark, wet patch on the carpet. Coffee. Not blood, thank God. And it was cold, which only meant that the mayhem had occurred longer ago than ten minutes, say. And the other wet patch was oil — the smashed globe of the lamp ground into the carpet confirmed that.
A loud klock made him glance up — and then freeze.
“That’s right,” said the figure framed in the doorway. “Keep still.”
James couldn’t wrench his gaze from the source of the click: a sleek handgun. One of the newer revolving pistols if he wasn’t mistaken. It was the first he’d seen, but everyone knew they were more accurate than the old flintlocks.
“Now. Slowly. Stand up.”
James nodded, his eyes finally focusing on the person — a woman, he realized with a sense of shock — behind the gun. She was tall and athletic, her gaze cold and direct. And she seemed extremely familiar. . . .
“Come on.” She bobbed the gun at him. “It’s time to stop playing about, young James.”
Sudden recognition sliced through him. “Mrs. Thorold?”
She smiled grimly. “But of course.”
He stared at her stupidly. She wore her usual hairstyle and type of dress, but everything else — the way she moved and spoke, even the predatory way she looked at him — was utterly different. Even that day in Pimlico hadn’t shown the full scale of her transformation. “You did all this . . . ?”
She smiled. “Aren’t you a clever boy. Now turn round and hold your hands high.” Questions raced through his head, but before he could phrase one, she snapped, “Do it!”
One advantage to the rubbish strewn all over the floor was that it made it easier to track her approach. She took her time picking her way through the debris. “Now don’t move.” Something jabbed James’s spine — the muzzle of the gun, presumably. Hands delved into his pockets, explored his waistband, his waistcoat. She extracted his wallet from his breast pocket and tossed it aside. Experimentally, he turned his head an inch or two to the left but stopped when the gun dug deeper into his back. “None of that, young man.”
Another pause and then the hands searched the tops of his boots. He was strongly tempted to kick backward. His leg muscles tensed in readiness, itching to strike out, but he’d never be quicker than the revolver.
“No knife?” Her voice was mocking. “You don’t look like the gun-carrying sort, but surely you aren’t going to tell me you came down to Limehouse with nothing but a pocketbook for protection!” A few drops of spittle flecked his ear.
“I’m a businessman. Of course I’m not armed.”
“Well, I’m a businesswoman, and I’d never be so stupid,” she jeered.
“I’ll bear that in mind in future.”
She chuckled. “You do that. Now”— her voice became crisp and commanding —“step toward the door, nice and slowly, and climb the stairs. I’ll be behind you with this pistol pointing at the back of your head.”
“Hands up? Or down?” James’s tone was exquisitely polite.
“Such nice manners,” she scoffed. “No wonder Angelica liked you.”
He relaxed his arms but jerked them back up again when she poked him with the gun. “Hands on your head.”
James walked out of the room, back through the musty corridor, and to the staircase. As they turned a corner, he asked, “How did you know I would come here?”
“You’re exceedingly predictable.”
He was offended. “How so?”
“Well, you came running at once as soon as you read that note.”
Quigley’s note? “How did you know about that?”
She barked with laughter. “Can’t you even guess?”
His stomach knotted. It was so obvious. “You wrote it, didn’t you?”
“With my left hand. The guttersnipe spelling was a nice touch, wasn’t it?”
“And that explains the time delay in the note: it was dated Saturday night, but I only received it today. You could have killed Quigley at any time, but you had to make sure I didn’t come here until this afternoon.”
“And here you are.”
When they reached the second floor, he paused, unsure whether to turn left or right. The house felt like a tomb, or a vault. Or maybe that was just his imaginative response to being marched with a gun to his head. In any case, the residents of the Lascars’ refuge were nowhere to be seen. Now he had to wonder if it was because they were all lying dead behind closed doors.
“What do you want from me?”
“Good Lord, you’re tedious. Keep moving.”
He started upstairs to the third story. “All right. What does Thorold want from me?”
There was a rich chuckle. “My dear boy — who ever mentioned my husband?”
“Are you denying that he’s your partner?”
“In the laws of this country a wife is a possession, not a partner.”
“So you’re not his business partner.” Once again, he had to tear down his assumptions and begin again.
She snorted. “You’re a bit slow, aren’t you?”
“So who is your business partner?”
“Move faster.”
He waited a moment, then tried a different tack. “Do you intend to murder me?”
“What do you think?” Her voice was rich with contempt.
They were on the landing of the third floor now, and the gun poked him between the shoulder blades. “Turn right.”
They entered a small room, sparely furnished with a single bed, desk, chair, and washstand. It held two further objects. The first was a large hookah standing in the center of the floor. The second was the body of Mr. Chen, bound hand and foot and crumpled in a heap beside the hookah.
James looked from Chen to Mrs. Thorold and back again. “Is he dead?”
She shrugged. “Perhaps. I only tapped his head, but he’s an old man.”
James knelt and touched Chen’s throat. The body was warm, but he couldn’t seem to find a heartbeat. Or perhaps his own pulse was pounding so loudly he couldn’t detect the other. He glared up at her, finally passing from disbelief to anger. “Why him? What did he ever do to you?”
Her pockmarks were deep, making a painful-looking pattern in her pale skin. “Like you, he asked too many questions. I came here to silence him.”
“So this is the grand scheme? To let people think we smoked ourselves to death? No one will believe that!”
“Come, now. You’re not thinking straight. Death by opium overdose is slow. I’ve not got all night to wait about and see if you’ve taken enough.”
James straightened slowly and looked into her clear blue eyes. They were exactly like Angelica’s. For the first time, he felt certain that he would die in this hovel. In this room.
She removed a length of rope from her handbag and tossed it to him. “Tie your ankles together.”
It was coarsely woven hemp. Strong sailor’s rope. “And if I refuse?”
She sighed. “You quibbling, nosy little swine. You’ve a choice. In the more comfortable scenario, you tie yourself up. I knock you out. Then I light a merry little fire that burns the whole place to the ground, but you don’t feel a thing.”
James raised one eyebrow and considered it as though it was a business offer. “And the second choice?”
“I shoot you once or twice, but not to kill — probably in the groin. You die a slow and painful death. Then I burn the house down anyway, and no one’s the wiser.”
“Shooting’s noisy. And perhaps I’m a coward. People will hear me scream.”
She smirked. “Maybe. But in this area, they’ll turn a deaf ear.”
James thought about that for a moment, then sat down and began to tie his ankles. He took his time and, as he worked, said, “Does Thorold know what you do?�
�
She shrugged. “I’d say he knows as much as he cares to.”
“Meaning as little as possible.”
“Precisely.”
“He knows about this place.”
“Does he now?”
“He named it in his will,” he said. “That’s how I found it.”
Her face turned ugly. “I might have guessed.”
“He left it a substantial legacy, and he’s also making regular donations.” James watched her features carefully. “Guilt money? For what you were doing?”
Petty irritation twisted her expression. “He was always a soft touch. No guts.”
He completed one final loop with the rope and knotted it. “There.”
“With that slip knot? Don’t play the fool with me, young James.”
He shrugged. “I thought it worth a try.”
“Perhaps with my husband you’d have succeeded,” she snorted. “Now retie it!”
“So your husband employed Lascars on his ships — or at least he claimed he did, and Lloyd’s paid up.” James mused as he worked. “But the ships always sank. And he felt guilty enough about that to donate money to the refuge. . . .” The facts were before him, but he couldn’t work out how to organize them. “It’s as though his scheme was broken in the middle, but he couldn’t fix it.”
A husband and wife, emphatically not partners.
Insurance fraud.
Sunken ships.
Guilt money.
A ransacked office.
There was at least one more missing detail. . . .
Mrs. Thorold watched him struggle with the puzzle, a scornful smirk on her face. “You poor dim brat,” she said, almost tenderly. “You’re nearly as stupid as my husband.”
Such contempt. Such arrogance. An idea flashed into his mind. “You were working against your husband! Sabotaging his shipments!”
“Ah. The male mind, sluggish and inadequate as it is, finally begins its labored processes.” She waved the pistol at his hands. “Don’t stop.”
She was arrogant, rude, decisive. She knew best. She enjoyed insulting him. With a jolt, James realized that he and Mrs. Thorold were more alike than he could have imagined. And with that shock came a heady sense of courage. His first concern now wasn’t survival or outsmarting the woman. Yet it rankled to stop just short of an explanation. It troubled his sense of order and process.
Very deliberately, he ceased his knot tying. Looking up at Mrs. Thorold with his most winsome grin, he said, “My poor brain finds it difficult to reason and tie knots simultaneously. Can’t you put me out of my misery — well, before you put me out of my misery?”
She snorted. “This isn’t a Drury Lane comedy.”
“Certainly not for me; comedies have happy endings.”
“Well, then?”
“It’s your drama. You’re the playwright and the heroine.”
“Mere flattery won’t save your life.”
“I’m not interested in saving my life.”
She mimed exaggerated surprise. “Brave words, little boy.”
“I’m interested in the story; the play, if you like. You’re sabotaging your husband’s shipments. But that hasn’t anything to do with the stolen artifacts from India, has it?”
She was watching him with amusement now, a small smile playing about her lips, although the gun never wavered. “Save your breath, dear. I’m still going to kill you.”
“I understood you the first time, believe me.”
“Then?”
He finished tying up his ankles. “I’m an engineer. I like to know how things fit together. Before you kill me, won’t you at least tell me about your scheme? Anything worth killing three men for — not to mention all those sailors — surely merits a little boasting. . . .”
“That little brat hardly counts.”
“Two men, then.”
“Chinamen aren’t real men.”
“All right, then. One boy, one foreigner, and one Englishman. It’s still a fair amount of dirty work.”
She gave in to a smirk. “You’re oddly persuasive.”
The tension in his gut suddenly, rapidly, eased. A trickle of sweat rolled down his forehead and stung his eye. “So I’m told.”
“You can have the short version: my husband is a fool who fancies himself a smuggler of precious artifacts. Yet he also makes false insurance claims that attract the attention of the authorities, jeopardizing not just the smuggling operation but our entire livelihood.”
Her use of the word our was interesting. “That much I knew.”
“Naturally, some little nobody at Lloyd’s worked out the scheme and began to bleed him for it.” Her mouth twisted in disgust. “Fancy trusting someone to cover your own stupidity!”
“So you stepped in?”
“It was only a matter of time until the business went under — either through blackmail or when Scotland Yard finally worked out what was happening.
“I took his plan to its logical conclusion. I run a pirate crew who attacks and loots my husband’s ships. It’s perfect: lower capital and running costs, and after I split the profit with my partner, the money’s entirely mine.”
“You don’t share it with your husband?”
She laughed. “Give me one good reason why I should.”
He blinked. It was an excellent question — and one that he’d entirely overlooked. Why should Mrs. Thorold work for the benefit of her family if she cared only for herself?
She was watching him with a bemused smile. “I thought not.”
He tried to rally. “How do you silence the Lascar crews on the ships you raid?”
She shrugged. “Pirates are bloodthirsty men. I imagine any useful survivors are sold as slaves in the Far East.”
James nodded, although his head was spinning. It was too much to process just yet. But he had to keep her talking . . . at the very least he had to learn whether Mary was in danger.
“That’s enough chitchat. Hands behind your back.” Her voice was crisp and businesslike once again.
“The house in Pimlico,” he said hastily. “Your headquarters?”
She only smiled and brandished another length of tough hemp rope.
“And your colleague — that Mr. Samuels. He runs the pirate crew?”
“I’m tired of talking to you. The play is over, young James.”
To his shame, he began to panic and thrash, kicking out at her with his bound legs. A few well-placed kicks in the ribs put a stop to that, and she knelt heavily on the small of his back. The binding of his wrists was swift and painfully tight.
“One last question,” he wheezed, as she stood to inspect her handiwork. “Aren’t you afraid my confederates will be looking for me?”
She only laughed. “That was feeble; unworthy of you, I’d say.”
“Why? You don’t think I have a colleague?”
“Who’d want to collaborate with you?”
James went limp with relief. His last vision was of a leering grin rushing toward his face. And then there was only blackness.
Mary was packing her trunk when a handful of gravel pattered against the window. Her breath caught, foolish though that was. James had made perfectly clear what he thought of her. She hesitated, uncertain how to respond. After a few seconds, another round of small stones struck the window. She flung the window open and looked down onto the pavement, eager despite herself. But instead of a tall young man, it was a scrawny child. A haze of mousy hair obscured most of its face. There must be some mistake. Yet as Mary peered down, the little body beckoned furtively. After a moment, Mary nodded and pointed to the service door.
A final look around the bedroom showed everything in order. Her trunk was neatly corded and labeled, and one of the footmen was charged with its delivery. As she descended the Thorolds’ staircase for the last time, she felt haunted by the ugliness of the day: Thorold’s indignant denials of guilt; James’s anger; Angelica’s sobbing, followed by Michael’s heartache; Mrs. Thorol
d’s glee. Mary couldn’t wait to return to the calm of the Agency.
Ignoring Cook in the kitchen, she opened the area door and blinked in astonishment. “Cass?” Their gazes locked for only a moment, after which Cass fixed hers firmly on the ground. Any number of questions raced through Mary’s mind. Why are you here? Are you hurt? Have you changed your mind? What’s wrong? She settled for, “Hello.”
“Miss.” Cass’s voice was barely audible.
Mary waited, but nothing else was forthcoming. “We can’t talk here,” she said quietly. “I’ll meet you at the back of the stables.” She waited again. “All right?”
A mute bob of the head signaled Cass’s comprehension. As Mary retraced her steps though the house, she suddenly realized that she’d done the wrong thing. It was unlikely that Cass would go round to the stables. Not only were Brown and the footmen prone to hanging about there for a smoke and a gossip, but Cass was likely to have second thoughts about speaking to her and take flight. Damn. Her second chance to help the girl and she’d bumbled it again. The idea sent her scurrying through the kitchen and out the back door. On her way through the courtyard, she noted mechanically that the carriage was not in the carriage house. The significance of that was lost on her for the moment.
Luck was with her in a small way today. There was no sign of the male servants, but in the darkest corner of the mews she spotted the waiting figure of Cass Day. Mary moved toward her slowly, as though approaching a frightened animal, and waited for Cass to speak first.
“I’m sorry I ran away, miss,” she said eventually, in a rusty voice.
“Did I frighten you?”
Cass’s eyes darted nervously to one side. “Not you, miss. I mean — that is, nothing you did. I was just stupid.” After an anguished pause, she blurted out, “The other maids kept whispering about the white slave trade, miss, and reading picture-papers about it, and going on about how respectable-looking ladies are running it. They’re full of it, they are, and when you — I mean, when I — that is . . .”
Mary’s eyes widened. “You thought I was trying to kidnap you?”
Cass’s face was beet red. “I thought that was why you were kind to me. I couldn’t think why any lady’d be kind to me except for that.”