The Agency: A Spy in the House

by Y. S. Lee

  Mary felt a pulse of sympathy. Hadn’t she said much the same thing to Anne Treleaven all those years ago?

  “I expect it shows I’m too stupid to go to school . . . doesn’t it?” The girl’s tone was hopeful, despite her words.

  “Have you thought more about going to school?”

  She nodded so vigorously that her hair flopped about. “I do want to go . . . if I still may. If you’re not too cross.”

  “I’m not angry, and there is still a place at this school I mentioned.”

  “I’ll work hard. I promise. I’m not clever, miss, but I’ll do my best, I swear. . . .”

  Mary took her by the shoulders. “Don’t promise me, Cass. Promise yourself.”

  Cass’s eyes widened as she absorbed that. Then she nodded. “You’re very good to me, Miss Quinn.”

  “Are you sure I’m not a white slaver?” Mary smiled.

  Cass blushed furiously. Then she laughed, falteringly, at herself. It was a thin, tentative squeak, a noise that suggested its maker was unfamiliar with the technique. All the same, it was the first time Mary had heard her laugh. “Yes, miss.”

  They were in a hansom bound for St. John’s Wood when Cass produced the notebook. “I think I must be very thick, Miss Quinn, ’cause I know my numbers and some letters, but I can’t make any sense of this.”

  Mary reluctantly accepted the object. Now that the assignment had ended, she was tired. Her brain was whirling with random bits of information, none of which she could assemble into a coherent whole. And she wanted to be left alone to think about her father.

  However, Cass was watching her expectantly. Mary flipped open the notebook and scanned its pages of minutely printed columns of figures. “This is a balance sheet, Cass. It shows sums of money coming in and going out of a business.” She showed her a random page. “Look: there’s a date here, followed by various entries of credits and debits, for a total profit of four hundred and sixty-two pounds, eight shillings, and four pence. It only really makes sense if you know a bit of bookkeeping.”

  Cass looked dismayed. “Will I have to learn that, too?”

  “If you like,” she murmured absently, turning over a page.

  “Do all ladies know it?”

  “Most ladies don’t. It’s mainly a clerk’s job, and there still aren’t many female clerks.”

  Cass still looked perplexed.

  Mary flicked through several more pages, then looked at the first and last written pages of the book. The financial entries spanned more than two years, and were kept with meticulous care. Someone would be searching frantically for this item. “Cass, whose notebook is this?”

  Cass looked instantly guilty. “I — I don’t know, miss.

  “But you just asked about ladies knowing bookkeeping. . . .”

  “I mean that I f-found it, miss.”

  “Where?”

  “B-beside the front steps, miss. When I was whitening them.”

  Mary forced herself to speak gently. “At the Thorolds’ house?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “When?”

  “I can’t remember exactly. A week ago? Perhaps less?”

  “Did you mention finding the book to anybody? Cook, perhaps?”

  Cass shook her head.

  Mary considered the object in her hand. It was small and weathered, and some of the gilt had worn off the pages, but it originally had been an expensive item. “Did you see the person who dropped this, Cass?”

  At this, Cass seemed to shrink back into her seat. “I — I don’t know, miss.”

  Mary considered her carefully. “Are you quite certain?”

  Cass’s gaze was fixed on the book. “It’s very important, isn’t it, miss?”

  Mary nodded. “Much more than you’d expect.”

  Cass stared for a second longer, then took a deep breath. “I didn’t see exactly, miss, but I think it was Mrs. Thorold. She came out of the house as I was whitening the steps, and so I had to do them over. When I started again at the bottom, it was lying on one side. It wasn’t there before.” She paused, then rattled on defensively, “But it can’t be hers, right, ’cause she’s a lady, and not a clerk or anything?”

  Mary thought back. Yes, that too made sense. Mrs. Thorold had gone out in a rush on Wednesday morning — the day Mary had overheard Angelica and Michael talking in the drawing room — and she’d been in a foul mood on her return. But if this belonged to Mrs. Thorold, it put a whole new interpretation on the Pimlico affair. Was it even possible that instead of consulting physicians and instead of carrying on an adulterous liaison, Mrs. Thorold was clandestinely running a business of some sort? And what type of business, exactly?

  Mary leafed through the pages once more, any scruples she might have had about reading someone else’s private affairs long evaporated. A fresh balance sheet was drawn up for this month, but lacking specific dates. There were often long gaps between transactions — sometimes of several months — but there were also clusters of entries. So it was a business that was seasonal or otherwise dependent on external pressures.

  If only she had a little more information . . . She flicked through the blank pages, of which there were many; the notebook was only half full. And then, at the very end of the book, she saw a tiny pencil annotation, half erased: C: 7, G.V., Lh.

  She sat back in the seat, stunned. Of course!

  What a blind, obtuse, harebrained ninny she’d been. And the carriage was gone now! Mrs. Thorold had said she’d be in her room, but in all the turmoil no one had checked.

  Mary leaned out of the hansom and gave the driver a rapid series of instructions. Reseating herself, she said, “Listen, Cass. You’ve just told me something very important, and I must attend to it immediately. The driver is going to take me to east London. Then he will take you to the school in Acacia Road, which is called Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls.

  “You will ask to see Miss Treleaven. Tell her that I have sent you as a new pupil, and then give her this notebook. Tell her I am meeting Mrs. Thorold at 7 George Villas, Limehouse, and to start immediately for that address. Do you understand me?”

  Cass looked troubled. “Yes.”

  Mary laid a hand on her shoulder. She pretended not to notice that, once again, the girl had flinched in anticipation of a blow. “You’ve done nothing wrong, Cass; nothing at all. And you’ve helped me immeasurably. I’m sorry I can’t introduce you to Miss Treleaven myself, but please understand that I have something very important to do now.”

  Cass nodded cautiously. “I understand.”

  “Good.”

  Even as she paid the driver to see Cass safely to the Academy, Mary began to second-guess what she was doing in Limehouse. She’d been wrong so many times in the past few days, and her sense of conviction began to evaporate as her boots touched the squelchy, rotting roadway near George Villas. Mrs. Thorold’s notebook — if it could be proven to be hers — was only a record of business transactions. It was devoid of specific references, and there was nothing to tie her to the Lascars’ refuge except that scrawled pencil address. Yet elsewhere — in the back of her mind — things clicked together. Even now, she couldn’t say why she was so certain that the answer lay here. But here she was, heeding instinct above conscious logic, gut over instruction.

  She spotted it the moment she rounded the corner: a plume of smoke wafting from one of the tall, narrow houses toward the end of the row. A small crowd clustered round the front of the buildings, more intent on watching the spectacle than putting out the fire.

  Mary broke into a run. “How long has it been burning?” she demanded of the stocky, middle-aged woman closest to her.

  “Just got here myself.” The woman’s voice was placid, unhurried. She folded her arms over her stained apron and appeared to settle in for the show.

  Mary pushed her way toward the front of the crowd. “Is anybody inside?” she shouted.

  The faces around her merely looked blank.

  “You.” Mary si
ngled out a girl in a shawl and bare feet who looked as though she’d just tumbled from bed. “Has somebody gone to see if anyone’s still inside?”

  The girl shook her head. “Too late for that.” She pointed. “See how fast it’s spreading?” Sure enough, smoke and flame were visible in the next window over.

  “Who lives next door?” Mary asked desperately. “Surely they want the fire put out?”

  The girl looked at her with sleepy, intelligent eyes. “In this hole? Why should anybody care?” As though to illustrate her meaning, someone heaved a brick through a ground-floor window and a ragged cheer broke from the crowd.

  Mary looked at the building in despair. Surely nobody was still inside. The old sailors, at least, were turned out each morning, and Mr. Chen was competent and sensible. He wouldn’t risk his life trying to save mere possessions — not even the cigar box. Yet . . . despite this rational assessment, that sense of conviction prevailed. She turned one last searching look on the crowd — not a policeman in sight — and ran into the building.

  Inside, it was not yet an inferno. The dank, gloomy entrance hall and corridors looked much as she remembered but for a light haze of smoke. The fire must have begun near the top of the building. She began with Mr. Chen’s office, noting its ransacked state quite mechanically. Swiftly, she scanned the wreckage for a glimpse of the cigar box but soon realized it was futile. She ought to have felt despair and outrage and frantically begun to search the room. But there wasn’t time for that. She had to check the rest of the building for people before she could worry about papers — even such important ones — and she was glad for the numb common sense that seemed to prevail within her.

  Up on the second floor, the smoke thickened and she crouched low, holding her handkerchief over her nose and mouth. She would search here last. If the fire was at the top, she had to begin there while she had time. The third story was thickly shrouded with smoke, and she was forced to crawl now, cursing her crinoline as, with each movement, it scraped her knees. The front rooms were the ones with smoke pouring from the windows. Nothing in the first room. Nothing in the second. The smoke stung her eyes, her lungs. She’d lost her handkerchief somewhere, some time ago.

  Working her way to the back of the building, she found a closed door from beneath which smoke billowed. The doorknob was warm, but possible to touch with her gloved hand. As she pushed the door open slowly, she braced herself for a blast of heat, a surge of flame. Instead, she was nearly knocked over by a stream of thick gray smoke. Coughing, crying, she waited for a minute, then turned back to the room. As the smoke flooded into the corridor, she could make out a prone form on the floor. Forgetting her running eyes and battered knees, she crawled over to the body.

  James.

  She wasn’t even surprised. At some level, her certainty had been focused on this. On him. He was bound, lying with his face turned toward the door. She stripped off a glove and felt his cheek: warm. A strong, steady pulse throbbed in his throat. Merely unconscious, then. But how would she ever drag him out? He easily outweighed her by fifty pounds.

  She shook him vigorously. “James!”

  Nothing.

  Shook again, harder. “Get up! James!”

  Still nothing.

  She slapped his face once, twice.

  Miraculously, his eyelashes fluttered slightly.

  “James!” she rasped. Her throat was hoarse with smoke. “Wake up!”

  His eyelids opened, and he smiled at her as sweetly as if he’d awakened from a nap. More sweetly than he’d ever looked at her before. “Mary.” His voice held mild surprise. “What are you doing here?”

  She grinned despite herself. “It’s a long story.”

  When he tried to move, he seemed surprised by the ropes at his hands and feet. Slowly, memory seemed to flood back, and he grimaced. “Damn.” He struggled, then winced. “You need to get out.”

  “I know. The building’s on fire.” A hysterical laugh rose in her throat, but turned into a cough en route. “We’re both getting out.”

  He glared at her — a confused, vague glare, but familiar all the same. “Forget it. Escape while you can.”

  “James. Do you have a knife?”

  “No.”

  She looked about, her frantic gaze bouncing off bedstead, washstand, hookah. “There must be something sharp. . . . I can break the windowpane.”

  “God damn it! Get out, Mary!” A fit of choking caught him, and when he finished, he croaked, “You’re damned stupid for a clever girl.”

  “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” she quipped, crawling round the bed toward the window. Then, in quite a different tone: “Oh, dear God.”

  He grunted. “Is he alive?”

  There was a long pause.

  “No.” When she crawled back, her expression held an odd blend of dismay and perplexity. She clutched an object in her hand. “A knife,” she said to James. Her voice trembled. “He had a penknife in his pocket.”

  James stared for a moment. Then, as she began to saw at the cords binding his wrists, he suddenly understood. “She knew he’d be no match for her strength.”

  It was a small knife, and the hemp fibers were coarse and strong. She gasped with frustration as the knife bounced off the rope once, twice, three times.

  “Mary?” He sounded dazed.

  “Yes?” Drops of salt water stung her eyes. She hadn’t realized she was sweating.

  “Mrs. Thorold. She did this — she was working against her husband, not with him.”

  “What?”

  “She’s a pirate!”

  “Not an actual pirate?”

  “Well, I doubt she has a parrot or an eye patch, but she’s running a pirate crew!”

  “So all those ships that went down . . . Thorold’s cargoes . . . ?”

  He nodded. “All her work.”

  She sighed and swore quietly.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You worked it out first.”

  He laughed at that. “I charmed it out of her.”

  “You can’t have been that charming; she still left you here for dead.”

  Finally, the rope gave way. As James winced and flexed his chafed and bleeding wrists, Mary set to work on his ankles. They’d already had more time than she could have hoped. But what if the fire had moved into the stairwell?

  Finally. “Sit up,” she ordered.

  He raised himself with a groan, but slowly managed to push himself to his feet. He grinned cockily. Almost immediately he wobbled and his knees buckled, sending him crashing to the floor with a slurred curse.

  “Is it the smoke?”

  He grimaced. “Concussion, I think.”

  She slid her arm about his waist, looping his arm over her shoulders. “Come on, then.” She braced herself and stood, taking some of his weight. He was able to help, but still leaned heavily on her shoulders.

  He glanced vaguely toward Chen’s body. “What about . . . ?”

  “The fire seems to have slowed in here, but I don’t want to risk another minute.”

  They set off, lurching and staggering. The heat seemed less intense, but sweat poured down both their faces: James’s from pain, Mary’s from the strain of holding him upright. The smoke was collecting in the corridor, and they both began to cough furiously.

  Mary couldn’t afford breath for speech. She could only hope that he stayed conscious. At the head of the stairs, she slapped his cheek lightly. “Down,” she ordered.

  In response, he gripped her shoulders tighter. At the first landing, the smoke eased a little and Mary glanced up at him. His face was black with soot. Hers must be the same. How had he ever recognized her?

  They turned onto the second-floor landing, and James ducked as they passed under a low doorway, tipping them off balance again. They lurched and staggered against the wall.

  “Mary.”

  “What?”

  He tilted her face back and kissed her.

  Her eyes widened. �
��What — what was that for?”

  For an answer, he kissed her again.

  She pushed him back breathlessly. “You really must be concussed.”

  “I’m perfectly lucid.”

  “You don’t even like me!”

  They began moving downward again. “That’s your main objection?”

  “It’s rather a good one.”

  “Well, as it happens, I do like you.”

  “Telling me to clear off? You have a funny way of showing it.”

  He stopped again. “For God’s sake,” he said in exasperation. “I was trying to protect you. Foolishly and pointlessly, as it turns out.” It was the most James-like speech he’d uttered so far, and for that reason it unnerved her all the more.

  “Shall we focus on leaving the burning building?” she snapped.

  They descended the remaining stairs and burst out through the front door, disheveled and reeking of smoke. They collapsed against the nearest lamppost, clinging to it to remain vertical, swallowing huge gulps of air that under any other circumstances would seem impossibly foul.

  Some time later — she couldn’t have said how much — Mary looked about her. Something was different, although her dazed senses couldn’t work it out. The streetscape, the buildings, the relative quiet of a Sunday afternoon . . . and then it struck her. The crowd, small as it had been, was gone. Only one person remained, watching her and James with mild interest.

  She tried to speak, but only a rattle emerged. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Where’s the crowd?” Her voice was a foghorn, two octaves lower than her usual pitch.

  The barefoot girl smiled wryly. “Bloodthirsty buggers; they’re only interested in total destruction.”

  Mary looked up at the Lascars’ home, the windows of which still belched smoke. “A house fire isn’t enough?”

  “Didn’t you know? I thought that’s why you went in.”

  Mary shook her head, thoroughly puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  The girl — or rather, woman — grinned again. Seen in the late-afternoon light, she was older than she first appeared and a number of her teeth were black or missing entirely. “The fire’s near put itself out.” At Mary’s frown, she sighed and leaned in. “The house. It’s too damp to burn, love. How else d’you think you came out alive?”