by Angela Misri
“She wants me to go back to bed,” Lin interrupted my thoughts. “You said you need help?”
I followed Aunt Chen out a back door to her shop about ten minutes later. She had sent Lin packing off to bed. We would have to communicate with her limited English.
Through the haze of smoke and dulled pain I thought I saw Portia Adams walking towards me, but that was impossible. She was counties away with her new lover doing God knows what.
I saw him right away, at the back of the second drug den Aunt Chen led me to. I walked around men in various states of stupor, leaving Chen to speak to the “helpers” who tried to get in my way.
“Brian,” I said to the man I love, the man I barely recognized, his long body twisted and bent into a fetal position, his damaged hand hanging off the filthy cot like it wasn’t even a part of him anymore. “I’m here. I’m back.”
CHAPTER 25
I HAD NO CHOICE but to take Chen up on her offer to stay the night above her shop. We couldn’t go back to Baker Street together and I was not letting Brian out of my sight again. She helped me manoeuvre Brian into the guest bed where we stripped him down to his skivvies, which he didn’t resist at all, as malleable as a sleepy toddler. She left the room with the bundle of clothes, shaking her head at me as she closed the door.
“I thought the opium dens had all been closed down by the Yard in my grandfather’s time,” I said, pulling the worn cotton sheet up to his chest and sitting down on the edge of the bed, being careful of his injured hand, which we had left in its grimy glove.
He mumbled something I couldn’t decipher and I reached out to turn his lips my way, but he flinched. I swallowed down my bile and stood. “I can speak now, Brian, and my hearing is vastly improved but I’m going to need you to speak up. I can also get you a pencil and a pad if you’d prefer …”
He pushed himself into a shaky sitting position to look me in the eye. “I have nothing to say,” he bit out, enunciating clearly, and then he rolled onto his side away from me, his arm extended in the same way it had been before.
“The Hell you don’t,” I hissed back.
He turned back, his eyes wide at my outburst.
“You have dropped everything in favour of your pain,” I said, unable to hold back my fury. “Your family, your friends, and your job. All of it so you can wallow in misery like a … I don’t even know what.”
He threw himself out of the bed to answer, nearly tipping over with the effort. “I dropped everything? Who pushed me away at every opportunity? Who left me to explain your absence to your grandmother, the police … Who ran off with a fancy new man we know nothing about?”
“Are you kidding me? We were on the run — pursued by Box 850 and the Yard …”
Brian bent over at the waist, sweating at the effort of this confrontation. Then his head came up with a look of horror and, covering his mouth, he bolted to the window, yanking it open to puke down the back of Chen’s building.
My anger lowered to simmer at this abject demonstration of his suffering and I walked over, my hand hovering over his back as he heaved. Not touching, because I didn’t want to surprise him into hurting his hand, which, even now, he was holding away from his body. His ribs were far too visible through his skin; his back sported bed sores that spoke of how much time he spent on it. I forced my mind away from the other clues his body fed me: the scent of lilacs, perhaps from one of the helpers at the den; the bruises on his shoulder where he had fallen down cement stairs, landing badly, in an effort to spare his wounded hand. My eyes focused on his hand as he fought to catch his breath. The glove was grimy but I didn’t recognize it and on closer examination, it was silk, and bespoke, if the sewing was to be believed.
“You,” he pointed at me with his good hand between rasping breaths, “have no right to judge me.”
“I am as damaged as you are,” I retorted, my ire cooling to a dangerous level. “I’ve spent most of my recovery with disabilities you can’t even imagine, running from place to place with people I cannot trust, all while having my reputation torn to shreds in my absence.”
“I am in a pain you cannot imagine,” he said, holding up his damaged hand like it was a filthy rat he’d found in his kitchen. “The pills and the opium are all that are keeping me alive.”
He was still getting the pills? How was he affording them?
He wiped the sweat from his brow, leaning back against the windowsill. “Where are we, anyway?”
“A friend’s house,” I replied, trying to get a better look at his silken glove. There was a stitched emblem at the wrist that looked a little like a lion. “We can’t stay long. I wouldn’t want to risk involving her in this trouble, but we should be safe for tonight.”
Reminding me of my refrain to Lancaster, Brian said, “Well, you can go anytime. I’m sure I can find my way home all on my own.”
“Really? When was the last time you were home? If your trousers were any indication, they haven’t been pressed in at least a week and your mother wouldn’t be able to watch you walk out the door like that,” I said. “She’s terrified, by the way. I could tell that from a single line in a newspaper article.”
He dropped his eyes from mine and I took the opportunity to move a little closer. “Brian, I am so sorry. I am as guilty of focusing on my own pain as I just accused you.”
When he said nothing, I moved even closer so I could feel the warmth of his body, aching to be held. “I’m here to support you in your recovery. As long as it takes. Whatever it takes.”
“Won’t you need to run off and solve this bombing with your new partner?” he said, petulance hovering around the edges of the question in the quiver of his bottom lip.
I slid my arms around him. “I can’t solve this without you and we can’t get back to Baker Street until we clear my name and find the bomber. Will you help me?”
He bent his head and rested his clammy forehead against mine. “I’m so tired of this pain, Portia. I can’t sleep. I can’t think.”
“I know,” I whispered.
That night was the worst I’ve had since holding my mother as she succumbed to her cancer. Brian was at turns lucid and able to talk about his trauma and at other times so sick that his chest ached from the heaving. I kept him hydrated, washed him down with cool cloths, and warmed him back up when he shook from the cold. It took only a few hours for him to beg for his pills and then by morning he was demanding them, threatening to call the Yard and turn me in if I didn’t feed his addiction.
Chen found me sitting outside the bathroom waiting for him to wash his face and gave me a cup of hot tea. She pointed at a second cup and at the bathroom door, indicating this was for Brian. Then she showed me a small sachet of tea and pointed to his cup again.
“I understand,” I said, nodding wearily. “I will make sure he drinks it. And I promise, we will leave as soon as he is able to walk.”
Lin joined us then, freshly washed for school, his arms full of clothes. “These were my uncle’s — the pants might be a bit short on your friend, but they’re clean.”
“Thank you, Lin,” I said. “And please thank your uncle when he gets back. I will wash them and return them as soon as I can.”
Lin glanced at his aunt before answering. “My uncle died many years ago. You can keep them.”
I opened my mouth to disagree, but saw the alarm on Chen’s face and changed my mind, nodding instead, and watching Lin disappear down the stairs that would lead down to the store.
“You don’t want him to know that your husband left,” I said, once I was sure enough time had passed for the child to have left the building.
“How?” Chen asked.
“You keep these clothes in a cedar chest,” I said, holding them up to my nose. “You could be saving them for Lin, but they are quite formal and old-fashioned and he’s wearing much newer clothes, as are you. I suspect they ar
e your husband’s wedding clothes.”
Chen nodded slowly.
“You saved his clothes, but sold his ring?” I asked, turning the shirt her way to show the slight indentation of a ring that had lain between the clothes, wrapped in wax paper for years. The wax paper had left behind slight traces as well, degrading over time. “That sounds like an angry response. If he’d died, you would have kept the ring, but if he’d left you for another woman …”
Chen’s chin hardened and I knew I’d struck close to home. I reached out. “Thank you for these. I can dispose of them once Brian is done with them and you need never think of them again.”
Brian coughed from inside the bathroom and the water started running again.
“Or is this like Gavin’s scrapbook?” I mused aloud. “Do you keep these clothes as a ward against his return?”
“No, he not come back,” Chen assured me, and then walked back to her room, her steps a little slower at the memories I had surfaced.
Brian opened the door, stopping me from pursuing her.
“I think I have thrown up or in other less pleasant ways, expelled, the entire contents of my body down to my bones,” he announced in a shaky voice.
I handed him the tea Chen had delivered. “Then drink this before we get on our way. You should have plenty of room.”
CHAPTER 26
TAKING A RICKSHAW OUT of Stepney Green might be considered a dangerously public way to travel, but Brian was barely able to walk down the back stairs, never mind negotiate his way onto a train platform. I worried that the walk through Chen’s shop would be a dangerous one and I could see that Brian’s eyes were everywhere, looking for something to fight his pain. But Chen, understanding her patient better than either of us, had covered her shelves with curtains so that neither a pill nor a plant was visible. Though he promised to master his emotions as best he could, his pain was palpable in how carefully he walked and the tears in his eyes every time we went over a bump in the road. I did my best to cushion him, but he seemed to be regaining some of his natural stubbornness, attempting to hold himself upright between bouts of heaving out the side of the rickshaw. I tipped very generously when we finally alighted from our transportation, hoping that the young bicyclist who had carried us here would not find himself questioned anytime soon.
“Where are we?” Brian said, leaning heavily against a brick wall.
“That pub over there is where we’re meeting Lancaster,” I said, pointing at The Wool and Weaver. It was closed because it was far too early for patrons, but I wanted the opportunity to scope the place out before the spy arrived. “We’re going to wait for him at the fabric shop across the way.”
I had been in this shop on several occasions, so I knew that the upstairs was a quiet spot that the elderly owner rarely visited — his knees were weak and made loud creaky noises when he attempted stairs. I peeked through the shop window to ascertain that no one was in yet, and then we made our way around to the back of the shop where deliveries were made. It took a few minutes, but I managed to pick the lock. I pushed Brian in, grabbed a rusty bin from the alleyway, and followed him up the stairs. He wheezed when he got to the top, but I led him over to sit at the window that overlooked the street. I handed him the rusty bin in case his stomach rebelled again and then strategically moved boxes of ribbons and yarn to hide him from sight. Once that was accomplished, I made my way to the basement of the shop (wherein I had seen the owner disappear for his cup of tea) to find a small kitchen, and boiled some water to steep Chen’s tea in. Leaving the teapot in case it was missed, I filled a ceramic pot with the tea, ran the boiling pot under some water to cool it, and then carried the tea and a mug up to Brian.
He had been digging through various boxes, no doubt looking for something to alleviate his pain like a half-empty bottle of liquor, but had come up empty.
“His name is Lancaster?” Brian asked, trying to replace things in boxes.
“The man who helped me escape Box 850? That’s what he says his name is,” I answered, helping him to put things right.
Brian took a sip of the tea before speaking again. “You think he lied about his name?”
“Spies lie for a living,” I replied, sitting down so we were shoulder-to-shoulder looking out on the street, to Brian’s right so I could hear him better.
“But you trusted him enough to go on the run with him? To wait for him here?”
“We’re waiting for him across the street to see that he comes alone and does not give me away,” I said. “That’s how much I trust him.”
Brian seemed buoyed by that admission and I found myself remembering a passionate kiss in an alleyway not far from here. Trust did not trump chemistry it seemed. I pushed that guilt away, refocusing on my boyfriend’s face. The stubble did nothing to detract from his features but his eyes looked sunken and the ever-present half moon bruising under them hadn’t receded overnight.
“Milk delivery,” he commented, causing me to glance back out the window to see the truck that had pulled up outside the pub.
“Brian, Gavin is back in London,” I said, as the milk truck drove away a few bottles lighter. “I haven’t seen him yet, but I saw his photo in the newspaper. Has the Yard been pursuing him?”
Brian shook his head ruefully. “I haven’t been at the Yard in … I don’t know. How long have you been gone?”
“Never mind,” I said, not wanting to upset him again. “Can I see your glove? Where did you get it?”
He looked at his glove in surprise, as if having forgotten it was on his hand. “Why?”
“It just doesn’t look like something you would wear … or buy.”
“I didn’t,” he admitted, gingerly unwrapping the glove from his injured hand, wincing the entire time. I hated to put him through the pain, but I had a suspicion that needed to be satisfied. He finally worked the thin silk off the burned appendage and I held in the gasp that tried to escape me. The burn scars on the back of his hand were light compared to the deep scars on his palm. I wanted to touch him so badly, but I knew that I couldn’t. Instead I took the glove he extended my way and focused on it.
As I’d suspected, a monogram of a lion and a trident revealed itself once I stretched the material out.
“What is it?”
“This monogram. I’ve seen it before. Gavin was wearing this same icon on a pin on his jacket. In the photo I told you about.”
“What?”
“He wants us to know he’s back and he wants us to know he has his eyes on you,” I replied, turning the glove over to see if there were any other distinguishing features. Other than the richness of the material and the fineness of the stitching, this was the only clue, but it sufficed.
Brian turned away to retch into his rusty bucket and I dug through my satchel for a handkerchief.
Brian grasped my wrist with his good hand, “Portia, it’s worse than that. When I ran out of money to buy more medication, I found this glove and a note with an address on it in the hallway of our flat — on the telephone table.”
“Gavin directed you to the drug den?” I asked, horrified at his level of manipulation.
“As long as I wore this glove, the drugs kept flowing, no matter how little money I had,” Brian explained. “Now it seems insane that I just accepted that, no questions asked … but at the time, it was like a gift from heaven.”
I handed Brian the kerchief, my mind whirring. “He drugged you. He may have been drugging you from the beginning. Brian did you notice any change in the pills you were taking? From when you left the hospital to the ones that got delivered to Baker Street with mine?”
Brian patted at his face and mouth and then said, “Now that you mention it, yes, but I thought maybe your Dr. Watson had changed the prescription to be more cost-effective. Wasn’t he involved in the pill delivery?”
“He was, but he didn’t deliver them himself,
” I replied, understanding the level of Gavin’s interference now and kicking myself that I hadn’t seen it sooner. Chen had all but laid it out for me when I first met her. “I never saw who made the deliveries. It was always when we weren’t home.”
“He was drugging me?” Brian repeated incredulously. “Trying to get me addicted?”
“He was,” I replied. “And I think he was drugging me too.”
Brian’s stopped rubbing at his mouth, his eyes wide.
“When I first met Chen, she wanted to examine my pills and she said I needed to stop taking them,” I explained. “I think the hearing loss is damage from the accident. But my speech confusion, that may have been caused by the drugs or enhanced by them. Gavin minored in chemistry in his studies, remember, and he was an expert on poisons — it’s why he was so sought-after as a coroner for the Yard. I think he took advantage of our injuries to take us out of service.”
“He’s up to something that he needs us sidelined to accomplish,” Brian said, shaking his head, anger pushing his shock aside. “You don’t think he’s behind the bombings …”
“I wouldn’t put anything past him at this point, but if I thought I had tenuous motives for Ilsa, I don’t see anything for Gavin to gain other than creating wanton panic to distract from a more financially-motivated plot. He’s here with a delegation from Austria, supposedly to negotiate between the Germans and the Brits,” I said, my eyes back on the street where two people were approaching The Wool and Weaver. “But we have two more pressing questions to tackle right now.”
The two people, one of whom was most assuredly the man I knew as Lancaster, approached the building from the back, and disappeared, most likely into the pub.
“I can go,” I started to say.
“There’s no way I’m leaving you alone with him again,” Brian interrupted. “Plus, if you mean to listen in on them rather than confront them, you’re going to need me. Unless your hearing is back to normal.”