He had decided to bring Miss Somerset along, even though the stakes were high—or rather, because the stakes were high. Catherine’s friend knew enough chemistry to ask the right questions, and yet she still looked like a schoolgirl. A very benign presence. He wished he had thought to ask her earlier.
But she balked at the courtyard entrance. “What should I say?”
“Anything that will gain us permission.”
“What if—?”
“You’ll do fine. Just relax.”
Biting her lip, she took the arm he offered. They picked their way over the few remaining flagstones spaced between dried clumps of grass and worn patches of earth, passing a sagging clothesline upon which grey nappies hung to dry. The door opened a scant three inches after William’s knock.
“What do yer want?” asked the woman on the other side, mistrust and annoyance evident on even the small portion of face she allowed them to see. Childish chatter came from behind, and the faint sound of a crying infant.
Miss Somerset gave her a wide-eyed stare, and William held his breath. Come on, he urged silently. Just take charge.
“Good morning, Mrs. . . . Smith?” she said.
“Who wants ter know?”
Miss Somerset nodded, the shoulders squaring again. “But . . . of course. It’s not fair to ask your name when we haven’t given you ours.” She held out a gloved hand. “My name is Miss Somerset, and this is my assistant, Mr. Doyle.”
Good for you! William thought, suppressing a smile as Mrs. Smith opened the door wide enough to accept Miss Somerset’s handshake.
“We’re from the Hassall Commission, and we’ve some concerns over the circumstances of Miss Arber’s untimely passing. If we could come in for just a—”
The woman’s hand shot back through the gap like a tortoise head withdrawing to its shell. “You can just turn yerselfs around. Just ’cause me sister took up with any bloke who’d buy her a bauble don’t mean I have to allow you folk to go carvin’ her up like she was a slab of mutton!”
Miss Somerset sent William a panicked look.
Don’t back down! was the message he hoped she could read in his eyes.
“I understand,” she said in a soothing voice. “A postmortem is not a pleasant thought. But just think. No matter how your sister lived, she has the opportunity to save some lives now. Don’t you think she would wish that?”
The woman snorted, her grin revealing two dark gaps in her yellowed teeth. “My sister never gave a tinker’s curse over anybody but herself. But you ain’t gonter take a knife to her.”
“But—”
“NO!” she exclaimed. William flinched as the door slammed with a splintering thud.
Miss Somerset turned to him, hazel eyes rimmed with red. “I’m so sorry.”
“You tried your best,” William told her. “I appreciate that.”
They walked through the weed-choked courtyard in silence. They had gone twelve feet or so up the lane when Miss Somerset said, “Wait.”
William looked at her.
“You said I should say anything that will get us the postmortem?” she asked.
“Absolutely.”
She nodded, turned around, and beckoned him on. William’s first series of four knocks was ignored, and was his second.
“Please try again,” the girl asked.
He stifled a sigh and raised a fist. This time door flew open and narrowed again to a gap just wide enough for one eye.
“If I have to send fer the police . . .”
Miss Somerset raised a placating hand. “This is the last time we’ll trouble you, Miss Smith, but please hear me.”
The eye narrowed, but the gap in the doorway remained.
“Mr. Doyle, here, is very wealthy. And he’ll give you ten pounds if you’ll allow the postmortem.”
The eye fastened upon William. “Twenty,” said the mouth below it.
“Done,” said William.
The door opened. “Won’t you come inside?”
****
“You’re a genius, Miss Somerset,” William said, carefully folding the letter with Mrs. Smith’s mark.
Miss Somerset blushed with pleasure. “Then you’re not angry about the money?”
“Angry? Not one iota. I can’t wait to tell everyone.” He could not wait to call home either, for it was Sarah who had suggested William allow Miss Somerset to gain some experience there this summer.
Their cabby was waiting on Commercial Road, as instructed. William was giving him instructions to take them back to the Commission when Miss Somerset turned away from the hansom. “Mr. Sedgwick?”
William looked over his shoulder. A young man had halted on the pavement, brown eyes uncertain above his smile. “Miss . . .”
“Somerset,” she said, extending a hand. “I first met you on the train to Cambridge, remember? King Lear?”
The young man grinned. “How could I have forgotten?”
William held out a hand as Miss Somerset beckoned him closer. The name had struck a chord, and once the introductions were made, he remembered from where. “Are you connected with the tea company?”
“I work there with my father and brother. But I’ve also founded a charity school nearby.” Mr. Sedgwick had said the latter part with more enthusiasm than the first, and indeed, he was smiling as proudly as a father mentioning his children.
“How interesting,” William said. “Please take no offense, but you’re rather young to be founding a school. What prompted you to do so?”
He looked a little sheepish, but replied with conviction, “It was something I felt God was impressing me to do. And now opportunities are opening that I could scarcely imagine happening when we started.”
“Yes?” William dipped into his pocket for notebook and pencil. “I’ll give you my address. Do send my wife and me some information.”
“Why, thank you, Mr. Doyle!” Mr. Sedgwick’s eyebrows rose hopefully. “Perhaps you both would care to have a tour?”
“I’m afraid I have urgent business.” William looked at Miss Somerset. He wasn’t certain what her relationship was to this young man, but he seemed a decent sort. If she had hopes for a courtship, he was happy to help it along. “But Miss Somerset may wish to stay, if you’ll see her to a carriage afterward.”
“I would be delighted,” he said.
“Oh, but I need to get back to the lab,” said Miss Somerset.
“We’ll not have the results of this until late this afternoon at the earliest,” William said, patting the paper in his coat pocket. He didn’t want to come out and say postmortem because it made people uncomfortable, plus Commission business was not something to be discussed out on the street. “Take an hour or two.”
****
“We opened the doors two months ago,” Hugh went on as they turned the corner from Berner to North Street. As soon as they passed the front of an old livery stable, he could see the building in the distance. Just the sight of it made him feel good. He was aware that he was babbling, but it was a relief to talk about the school to someone interested. While his family expressed pride in what he was doing—his father even sponsoring two students in addition to donating the desks—there was at home and in the office an almost palatable undercurrent of resentment that he should be so absorbed in something out of the realm of the family business.
“And we’ve now thirty-seven students. Most of them possess only rudimentary reading skills, so that’s our strongest emphasis. We had thirty-nine students in the beginning, but unfortunately two enrolled only because they assumed it would be easier than factory work, and gave their schoolmasters grief until we made them leave.”
He gave her a cautious look. “I’m aware of how that sounds, but we had given them fair warning, and we could not allow them to steal classroom time from the thirty-seven who are serious about education. Ironic, that I was never serious about it, but as Mr. Holland—he’s a Wesleyan minister who helped us find students—says, life is hard here, and we pay
the children no favors when we mollycoddle them.”
“Thirty-seven students?” Miss Somerset said, hand resting in the crook of his arm.
But her smile seemed pasted on, her expression distracted, and Hugh wondered if Mr. Doyle had pressured her into accompanying him. “If this isn’t a good time, Miss Somerset . . .”
She looked at him. “I beg your . . . oh, no, I’m very eager to see your school. You’re conducting summer classes?”
“Just this summer—we started so late in the year, you see, and there is so much to do. We’ll let out in August for a month’s vacation.”
“I see.” They walked a mere three steps more when she looked at him again and blurted, “I burned the letter.”
Now it was his turn to beg pardon. “The letter?”
“The one you sent Catherine—Miss Rayborn—at Girton. That’s why she didn’t answer it.”
He had only scant memory of what he had written over a year ago. Still, he was relieved for the sake of his ego to learn that lack of interest had not prompted the young woman to ignore his letter.
“Why did you burn it?” he asked.
She glanced away as color spread to the roots of her red hair, and he knew. Perhaps that was why Miss Rayborn had asked him to wait until spring to write.
He patted the hand resting in the crook of his arm. “Water under the bridge, Miss Somerset.”
“That’s very kind of you,” she murmured.
“How is Miss Rayborn?”
Worry entered the hazel eyes. “She’s in Bombay with her immediate family.”
“Ah,” he said with a nod. “I remember her mentioning Bombay to you on the train that time. Her father is headmaster of a school, yes?”
“Yes. She’s supposed to return on the twentieth of August, but her father wired her uncle that the date of her departure will depend on the conflict in Egypt.”
“The Suez Canal.” He realized the connection. “How unsettling. I’m glad she’s acting with caution.”
“And I. But I do hope she makes it back in time for Michaelmas Term.”
They walked in silence for a moment, and then she said, “I could inform you when she does . . .”
“I beg your pardon?”
“In case you’d care to write again. I believe she’d like to hear from you. That is . . . you’re not married, are you?”
“I’m not married.” A picture came to his mind, Miss Rayborn exiting a coach in front of the Lyceum with an aristocratic-looking man. “Hasn’t she a beau?”
“Not any more,” Miss Somerset said in a hopeful tone.
They were approaching the entrance to his school. Mr. Madden’s voice floated through the open window to their left. “ . . . give us an example of some action verbs?”
A little part of Hugh wondered what might have been. But then, it probably wasn’t meant to be. Not with so many obstacles. And his heart still ached for Lillian, though his duties at work and the school allowed him little time to brood.
“Thank you, but I’m really quite busy,” he said politely. Holding open the door to the entrance hall for her, he returned to the subject that interested him most. “I was pleasantly surprised at how bright most of these children are . . .”
Thirty-Seven
Miss Arber’s postmortem revealed definite lead poisoning. During the following week, William and fellow Commission investigator Frank Hinks interviewed a half dozen people showing early stages of the same symptoms of which Miss Arber complained—workers in the umbrella factory in Whitechapel, a brickworks in Spitafields, and a shipping warehouse in Wapping. Snuff turned out to be the common denominator, namely Rose of Lancaster Quality Snuff, packaged by Halliday Tobacconist on, of all places, Bond Street, safely removed from the victims of their hemlock.
“They were coloring their tobacco with lead chromate,” William explained to Sarah on the twenty-fourth, between spoonfuls of the beef and vegetable soup Trudy had insisted on warming over for him. They sat together in the dining room, Sarah in nightgown, wrapper, and slippers, he in shirtsleeves with his coat hanging on the back of the chair. He had had a long day, between visiting shops with Mr. Hinks to remove the product from the shelves and consulting with the Hassall Commission’s attorney to draw up a request for arrest warrants for the two Halliday brothers.
“Lead chromate . . .” Sarah said, and gave a little shudder. “Those poor people. Didn’t you catch someone coloring mustard with it once?”
“Twice. And now and again we put someone out of business for adding minuscule amounts to snuff. But they obviously dumped too much in a batch and, not wanting to waste it, sold it to shops on the East side.”
That was what galled him the most about those who would do such things. Nine times out of ten they pushed their poisons off on poor people because not much notice would be taken. Poison snuff in Mayfair or Kensington would have been front-page news. But at least the Times would be sending a reporter when he and the police went to Bond Street tomorrow morning to make the arrests.
“Why don’t you bring Miss Somerset along too?” Sarah said, as William tore a piece of bread to dip into the soup. “She’s leaving for Girton next week. Wouldn’t it be satisfying for her to witness the end result?”
“To an arrest?” William had not invited Miss Somerset along to follow investigations, as certain areas of Spitalfields and Wapping were not safe for even an escorted woman. The girl was clearly disappointed when he consigned her to the laboratory with the three other chemists, but she had not protested. Respects authority, William thought. She would be a fine addition to the Commission one day.
But the Halliday brothers could come along meekly, or then, they could rail in language unfit for a lady’s ears. When he mentioned that to Sarah, she said, “You could warn her to be prepared to step outside. But give her the choice of whether or not to go.”
“Very well. I’ll invite her just because you asked me.”
“You’re a dear,” she said, putting a hand upon his arm.
William smiled. “I have my moments. Now, tell me what my son did today. Did you sing the Periodic Table to him as I asked?”
She laughed, and he touched a tendril of the blond hair spilling over her shoulder and felt almost sorry for the Halliday brothers, comfortable in their beds for the last time until who knew when? To lose the company of loved ones, and all for a few extra shillings?
He had lived poor longer than rich, worked longer as a servant than a respected chemist. Through poverty and wealth, he had discovered that the things that brought him the most pleasure cost him nothing materially. Gratitude overwhelmed him, that God would place shining examples of that lesson in his life: Aunt Naomi, Daniel, Vicar Sharp from Mayfair, and even Mr. Duffy. And that he would learn this lesson while young enough to avoid storing up regrets that would embitter his old age.
“What are you thinking?” Sarah asked.
He smiled and picked up his spoon again. “I’ll tell you later.” Such things were not meant to be discussed at a long table over a bowl of soup, but in the privacy of their chamber, with her resting against his shoulder while their son slept in his cradle nearby.
****
The weight of Hugh’s father’s stare was almost unbearable, not for any hostility in it, but for the disappointment.
“I anticipated as much,” he said.
“You were correct. Being an absentee headmaster is too difficult,” Hugh told him. “I’ve tried, but we’ve almost twenty additional students coming in September. I’m needed there.”
“You’re needed here too.”
“But you have Brian now. And Lane next year. You got on just fine before I ever came.”
Sadness lengthened his father’s face, making him appear older than his forty-seven years. “I had such dreams, Hugh. My sons here at my side . . .”
It took all of Hugh’s self-possession to hold back tears. “They weren’t my dreams, Sir,” he said in a soft voice. “And if I were born a daughter instead of a s
on, you wouldn’t demand this of me.”
Again, the stare. “Demand?”
“How else can I see it, when I’m not able to leave without this terrible guilt?”
His father’s shoulders rose and fell with his sigh. “Are you absolutely positive this is what you want to do?”
“I was never more sure of anything, Father.”
“Very well.”
The words were said with such futility, as if his father had given up all hope in him. Getting to his feet, Hugh said, “Thank you, Sir.”
“Umhmm.” His father picked up a file from his desk.
Hugh swallowed, as the image of his father blurred. “I’ll make you proud of me one day.”
His father looked up again. The two stared across at each other. The older man’s eyes reddened. “I’m proud of you already, son. Never forget that.”
He rose from his chair and held out an arm. Hugh hurried around the desk. It was the first time that Hugh could recall his father embracing him. It made him feel honored, as if his father had just now accepted his adulthood, and yet at the same time he felt protected like a small boy. Hours later, after he had cleaned out his desk and left the office, he could still feel the strong arms about his shoulders.
****
On the twentieth of August, British troops arrived at Port Sa’id and closed the Suez Canal at both ends. The conflict ended a little over three weeks later when the British defeated the Egyptian Army at the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir, and the Canal was deemed safe for travel again. The next P & O Steamer to leave Bombay was on the fifteenth of September. Fortunately, the bookings Catherine and Mrs. Jennings had secured earlier were honored. The thirteen-day journey commenced without incident, other than Mrs. Jennings’ seasickness and declarations that she would never travel this way again. On the twenty-eighth they arrived in Tilbury. Catherine was only able to spend the following day with her Hampstead relations, for she had to take the train to Girton on the thirtieth to prepare for the beginning of her third year, just days away.
Peggy met her on the platform at Cambridge Station. They embraced, and Catherine nodded toward a group of giggling female freshers.
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