by Steven Price
Well, sir? Utterson stood over the gallerist, rubbing his hands for heat. Are you satisfied? Can we get off this blasted river?
The gallerist met William’s eye. It is The Emma, Mr. Pinkerton. I can’t know the condition until we return to a proper location. But it is she.
It will prove undamaged, sir, I am certain of it.
Farquhar was cautiously rolling the oilskin tight and sliding it all back into the leather painter’s tube. Who are these men? he said with a sudden fierce dignity. Mr. Utterson, you keep very poor company, sir. I should be ashamed.
But Utterson only shrugged, unoffended. I serve the interests of the law, sir. That is all.
William turned in time to see the girl’s launch pull away and gather speed and disappear upriver into the mist. He stood, brooding. And then he strode sharply past the two men and leaned in at the wheelhouse and told the captain to follow the launch.
The captain took the pipe in his fist, looked at him. Follow it? And the river in traffic? he said dubiously. I were paid to deliver ye downcurrent. He had the powerful forearms of a sailor and the thick tattooed neck of a pugilist but William stood half again his weight and he wrapped a hand over the captain’s lapels.
Follow that boat, he said again. This is police business.
Ye ain’t police. But there was uncertainty in the man’s eye.
Mr. Pinkerton, Utterson called sharply. I must advise against whatever it is you are intending. My clients were forthright and direct with you. You would do well to respect that. Captain, please proceed with your instructions.
The captain was looking angrily at William.
William withdrew his Colt from his pocket and cocked the hammer and pressed it against the captain’s forehead. No one spoke.
Aye, said the captain, very still. We’ll follow her.
William uncocked the hammer and lowered the weapon.
The captain stamped twice on the trap door of the boiler and the steamer lurched and started to catch speed and the deck rolled and rose cresting and fell in the spray. The launch was gone in the fog and the river traffic and William did not know if it could be overtaken. They were moving at speed and the hull smacked and jounced over the chop. He did not see the green hull of the launch. The wind was bitingly cold and William felt the wings of his chesterfield crackling out behind him and he leaned into the rise and drop of the planks under him to hold his balance. Out of the corner of one eye he glimpsed Utterson, shifting his weight, starting to approach, and William half turned and raised his revolver. He could see Farquhar’s face in the lee of the stack, lean, grey. Eyes closed, the painting in its tube crushed to his chest.
You stay back, William hollered. The wind sucking the words from his lips.
Utterson froze. Tried to raise his hands on the rolling deck. What is it you mean to do, sir?
William did not reply but turned back, staring into the fog at the passing vessels. Colliers with men clambering over their piles, ferries crammed with clerks, scows stacked with crates. One hand fixed to the railing to steady himself. And then the captain slowed and pointed and William glimpsed the small green stern of the launch ahead.
Don’t overtake them, he called. Keep us a distance back.
The urchin’s launch drew in close to a rickety pier on the north bank below London Bridge and William watched her leap nimbly ashore before the vessel had even moored and then she was gone under the span in the crowds. He walked slowly the length of the deck and gripped the cables staring all the while at the space where she had vanished and as they drew near he looped a leg over the railing. He’d be damned if he would let her escape. She was his one lead to Shade.
Mr. Pinkerton, sir, Farquhar called. He got unsteadily to his feet. You cannot mean to leave me here, sir. I hired you to ensure the safe return of The Emma.
You have your painting.
It has not yet been returned, sir. Not to safety.
It’s safe enough. William paused, glared at the solicitor. Mr. Utterson here has been hired to facilitate the exchange. It is in his interest to make sure no harm comes to you or to the painting. It is his reputation at stake here.
The captain’s face lifted from behind his wheel. The Emma, he said. That ain’t that painting what was stolen an in all the dailies, now, is it?
William frowned. Mr. Blackwell will be along shortly, I don’t doubt, he said. Make your own way or wait for his arrival, Mr. Farquhar. Either should suffice. He gave Utterson a black look. I’ll hold you responsible, sir, should any misfortune befall this gentleman. Captain, he called.
The burly man peered at him.
William tipped his hat. Thank you, sir.
And then the pier was within reach and he hurled himself across the closing gap and rolled to his feet and snatched up his hat and pressed through the crowds after the girl.
FORTY-SEVEN
Foole had stood silhouetted high in the cold of the stone overpass watching Farquhar and Pinkerton climb down from their brougham into the crowd. He wore a frayed wool labourer’s suit and he stood with his weight twisted over one leg like a man arthritic and long worn down by the world and he let the minutes pass. The itch and curl of the plaster worried away at the skin under his collar and he raised two ruined fingers, smoothed the beard glued to his chin. Though he would be visible against the sky should Pinkerton look his way the detective did not lift his face. He watched Molly approach and then she was leading them down towards Billingsgate Stairs and Foole turned and walked briskly back across the span. Fludd was waiting in a stained apron, running a hand over the mare’s flanks, murmuring. They were reined up in a filthy court and neither spoke but instead climbed aboard the bench seat and Fludd clicked the reins and the waggon creaked slowly out into the morning traffic.
The clock? Fludd grunted.
Past eleven. Gives us an hour in the clear.
You seen to the butler, then.
Called away this morning on sudden family business. A sister facing imminent eviction.
Fludd smiled. Nice. An the cook? Them two cleanin girls?
Gone to the country with the mistress.
Fludd cracked the reins in impatience and the mare lurched and leaned into her harness. The peeling slat boards of the waggon rattling as they went. The going was slow and they did not reach Farquhar’s residence until half past the hour and Fludd was careful to pull sidelong to the bollards out front. On the gate of the waggon was painted Abbott’s Carting & Movers in bold red letters. From the back Fludd lifted out an enormous wood crate, empty. FRAGILE stamped on the side.
Foole took up several empty dun sacks. He pushed his cap back on his head, squinched up one eye. All righty, he said in a rough accent. Let’s get this here delivery done, eh, ye moke.
Fludd grunted in disgust.
Oi. Ye don’t like me accent?
Is that what that is?
Foole grinned. The morning was bright, clear, there were ladies walking the footway escorted by men in silk hats and Foole and Fludd tipped their caps as they passed. They walked boldly up to the tall front doors and set down their loads and Foole withdrew the forged keys on their ring and calmly tried each in the lock until the fourth took and he turned it twice and then the heavy oak doors to George Farquhar’s mansion swung open, and the two men glanced back once, picked up their empty crate and sacks, and walked in.
The house was still. They knew what they hunted but stood in the gloom listening all the same. No footfall, no movement. Foole had explained the floor plans to Fludd as he had traced them on the night of the dinner and the two men moved now as one, sliding silently towards the staircase. Farquhar would be somewhere down the Thames by now, Foole knew, Pinkerton with him.
At the base of the stairs they parted. Fludd went ahead into the depths of the house with his empty crate held out before him in search of silver plate and valuables from the dining room. Foole ascended the stairs. He went at once to the gentleman’s bedroom and opened the drawers and riffled through and scooped
out the man’s cufflinks and examined each in the weak light and placed them one by one into a sack. Farquhar had a fine collection of gold and silver pocket watches and Foole took these as well. He found a small safe in the man’s wardrobe and he tried the various keys until he found the right one and inside he discovered a large amount of cash and securities. He took all of it. He was quick, silent, to the point. There were packets of private correspondence and these he did not disturb.
He paused in the upper hall and admired a small watercolour of the Thames and considered removing it from its bracket but then thought otherwise. He passed on into the man’s study and there he searched the man’s desk but he did not find the letter he had left. He checked the pockets of the man’s several coats but it was gone. He frowned, he stood with a hand on his head and turned slowly. Out of pique he took a gold-plated writing set and a fine crystal paperweight and a rare early copy of Shakespeare from the seventeenth century and then he slipped back out into the hall.
Eleven minutes had passed.
Inside Farquhar’s wife’s bedchamber he paused, hand still on the door, feeling all at once uneasy. The room was dim, heavily furnished, a great oak four-poster with its drapes drawn looming in the centre of the carpet. He did not know why the curtains of an unoccupied bed would be drawn. But the feeling passed and the room still stood silent and he went in and crossed to the far wall and started going through the bureau. It was then he heard it: a soft sigh, a creak of the mattress.
A grey hand parted the curtains of the bed and the slow sleep-rumpled figure of Mrs. Farquhar emerged.
Foole froze. He melted back into the shadows, dark, wrathful. Her grey hair looked wild, her cheeks smudged with the night’s makeup. She turned her face, coughed sharply, spat some substance into the carpet at her feet. Then sat, rolling her shoulders, opening and closing her mouth.
Foole did not dare breathe.
But she did not look his way. After a moment she groaned and eased her feet into a pair of velvet slippers and got up and picked a robe from her bedside chair and went out. Foole stood in the suddenly empty bedchamber shaking in disbelief and clutching his half-filled sacks and then he followed her to the door.
She was descending the stairs, old, stiff, miserable.
He thought of Fludd below, filling his crate, and he thought to follow and warn him but then changed his mind and slipped back into the old woman’s bedchamber. The giant had a gift for such work and would handle himself. Foole found nothing of value in the bureau and he glanced anxiously at the door but heard nothing and then he opened an ancient creaking wardrobe and there it was. A second safe. The same key opened it as had opened her husband’s and Foole shook his head, amazed. Inside were two shelves, each filled with large jewellery boxes, heavy, and Foole opened the lid of the first and for a sudden impossible moment crouched there, dazzled. Nine, ten, twelve necklaces. Cut diamonds of every carat shining with a luminescence that burned up out of the stones themselves and filled the room with light. The pieces were exquisite. He shut the lid and slipped the box into the sack and did not trouble to open the others but took them all. Shut the safe, shut the wardrobe, hurried out into the hall.
The old lady still had not returned.
He moved cautiously to the landing in the dimness. He did not know if Fludd had found her yet and he leaned out over the railing and there he saw, in the gloom, the huge silent figure of Fludd with his back pressed to a pillar in the great hall, wary. He could just make out the old lady in her pale robe emerging from the back hall with an enamel tray in her hands, a pitcher of water and a plate of cold chicken on the tray, and he watched the woman approach. She would need to turn at the pillar and would pass the giant where he hid and Foole tried to catch his companion’s eye to warn him but could not.
The old lady came nearer.
Foole feared what Fludd must do should she find him and he had just set his sacks down and readied himself to leap the railing when Fludd, liquid, noiseless, poured around the pillar at the very moment she turned, keeping himself concealed, a shadow, a wraith, and the old lady glided unaware past.
Then she was ascending the stairs and Foole hid behind a potted fern and watched her go back to her bedchamber and he lifted the sacks silently into his arms to keep them from tinkling and slipped noiselessly, step by step, down the carpeted stairs.
Fludd was waiting with the full crate in his arms and he gave Foole a long angry glower and then the two thieves slipped outside, into the frenzy of the noon street, simple labourers, one a feeble-minded giant in an apron, the other an old man worn by the world, eager to be gone.
FORTY-EIGHT
William came at a run up the crooked stairs from London Bridge Pier, the nailed wood slats rattling under his weight, the clerks and passengers roughed up against the railing as he went. He did not see the girl. She had conducted herself with great coolness and professionalism that morning and he understood whatever else that she was no hired amateur in this but some valued part of Shade’s crew. He pushed across to an iron gas lamp on a stone pedestal and half climbed its length and scanned the roar of bridge traffic pouring north into King William Street but she had vanished into the mist, his last trace back to Shade. A crossing sweep chuckled at him, face blacked, shoeless in the cold.
Fine day for it, sir, he grinned.
William looked at him, looked away. And there, out across the span of the bridge, he saw the girl.
Crossing over into Southwark, red hat doffed, small shoulders hunched. She walked fast, ducking around the crush of carts, the leather satchel gripped tight.
He dropped back to the ground and started to run. He would slow every twenty paces and hoist himself up onto the railing of the bridge and find her again. At last he had caught up to her and he kept himself some thirty feet back just at the edge of the drifting fog and he followed her down off London Bridge and into the industrial chaos of Borough High Street.
The traffic was rougher there, the men all in leather aprons or stained woollens. The girl glanced back the way she had come then ducked into a small sweet shop. William drew his hat low, waited in a doorway across the street. After ten minutes a man in an ill-fitting coat came out wiping his hands on his trousers and made his way down the block to a cab stand and unhooked the nosebag from his mare and climbed up into the driver’s perch of his carriage. Then the girl came out. She kept her head low with her cap obscuring her eyes and went straight to the carriage and climbed in.
William understood too late what was happening and he swore and started across the street at a run. But the carriage was already pulling out and he reached the cab stand out of breath and set a hand on the first hansom in line and called out for the driver.
Aye sir, and where is it you’re bound to then? A young man slid lazily out from under a shelter. He was eating an apple.
William gestured at the carriage disappearing in the traffic. I need to follow that carriage. You can manage that?
The driver peered after the carriage. What, that four-wheeler there? Aye, I’d say so, he said, cocking his hat back on his head. Be a shilling or two extra for the trouble, though.
Don’t lose it and I’ll pay you double.
Double it is, sir. Up you get.
William hauled himself forcefully up and the driver hooked a foot on the stem-pole and scrambled onto his perch and the hansom took off at a wild jouncing pace. William gripped the leather handle and leaned forward louring at the shapes in the fog. He was thinking of his father’s Shade. In that Cumberland photograph he had seen no indication of love. Nothing fierce nor unyielding nor to be dreaded. Still he felt a rage rising in him and he sat with his fists bunched before him as the cab rattled sharply on.
The girl’s carriage halted at a small public square at the junction of Newington Butts. Unwashed children lurked on the steps and a knife-grinder’s cart stood forlorn at an open gate. William’s cab clattered past and reined up some twenty feet beyond at a wholesale grocer’s yard off Kennington
Park Road. He swung down with the air cold on his face and he crushed a five-pound note into the driver’s hand.
It’s too much, sir, the man called in astonishment.
But William was already striding away. The girl herself did not slow but turned purposefully at Penton Place. It was a shabby terrace in that south London district with houses set hard up against the footways and a roadway filled with mud as if it had once been set and then the stones taken again up. He passed maids in heavy coats and delivery men coaxing their waggons along the ruts and junk men hauling their carts by hand. A stink hung in the air from the sperm-oil works nearby and he could not get the taste of it from his nostrils. His Colt Navy swung in his pocket heavy as a stone in a stocking and he set one hand on it to check its swing. Something about the street felt wrong.
At last the girl turned and entered a house on the left. A strangled flower bed lay walled in and dying under the front steps and there were rusting hinges where a gate must once have hung. On either side stood the melancholy darkened houses of the dispossessed with undressed windows and faded To Let signs propped against their panes. In the back stood a railway cutting with the trains rattling noisily past trailing clouds of smoke.
He did not stop but walked slowly on. A pale face appeared at the parlour window then vanished, the drapes swaying back into stillness. He did not know if Shade was inside or not and he walked with his face averted until he was out of sight and then doubled back and slid into a shadowed alcove facing the house.
He smoothed his moustaches with his fingers. He checked his gun.
He waited.
FORTY-NINE
Fludd heaved the crate up onto the bed of the waggon with a bang and climbed unsteadily aboard after it and shoved it farther up against the rear slats. Foole crouched, tied off the twin sacks, got up into the driver’s bench. Neither man spoke. But both tipped their caps to any lady who passed and Fludd whistled pleasantly while unhooking the mare’s nosebag and then he hauled himself up behind the reins.