by Carol Hedges
Yours sincerely
Sept. Able
It is a puzzling letter, and Josephine has spent some time reading and rereading it in an attempt to work out why this Romanian Countess would be interested in her uncle’s Will. She has come to the conclusion that there is only one way to find out, and so, having carefully considered Mr Able’s kind offer, she has decided that she will save him the trouble, and proceed in the matter herself.
After a light snack, Josephine takes a cab and arrives at the north end of Russell Square. Ahead lie the grand terraced houses where the bankers, the merchants, the Sirs and my noble Lords live. Green painted wrought-iron railings surround the plane-tree'd gardens, the statue of Lord Bedford at the centre and the pump on the east side.
There are Watch Boxes along the perimeter. Some of these are occupied by policemen, but they barely register her presence. She has already noticed how useful it is to be a young woman wearing mourning dress. As far as the world is concerned, she might just as well be clothed in invisibility. She crosses to the west side, surreptitiously checking the numbers upon the doors, until she arrives at number 55.
At first glance, the house seems unoccupied. There are no lights in the hallway, no servants visible in the basement kitchen. Leaves are piled upon the front step and in the area. The Venetian blinds are drawn down at every window. The house gives off an unfriendly air, as if it repels visitors.
Undeterred, Josephine extracts a calling card from her reticule. She mounts the steps and knocks on the door. She hears the sound echo through the house, but no footsteps are heard in response. She waits for a while, then knocks again. Again, nothing happens. Disappointed, she turns from the door.
However just as she is preparing to leave, she senses movement behind one of the ground-floor blinds. A slat is carefully raised. Something gleams behind it. The liquorice shimmer of a human eye.
A second later, the slat is lowered. The house goes on giving an impression of non-occupancy to the passing world. But as she walks away, Josephine cannot help the sensation that somebody inside the house is watching her. And not in a good way.
****
Night falls, and with it comes rain, drumming off roof tiles, waterfalling in torrents from leaky gutters. London is a god-forsaken city when it rains. (God-forsaken when it doesn’t.)
Rain whips the surface of the muck-encrusted streets into thick brown soup. Rain coats ancient brick buildings in a slimy sheen of wet. Rain glugs and gurgles into drains and culverts.
There is a peculiar quality to London rain. It is grey-green in colour and viscous, as if the sooty fat from a million chimneys and stoves has risen up, formed into layers in the sky, and is now being dumped back on earth in liquid form.
Safe and warm in their high-pillowed Hampstead bed, Mr and Mrs Thorpe lie side by side like effigies upon two ancient tombs Mr Thorpe is not listening to the falling torrents, instead he is listening to his beloved consort, whose conversation somewhat resembles the rain in that it gushes on and on without much apparent cessation.
“Isabella looked very well today,” Mrs Thorpe says. “That pink dress suits her admirably. She always looks pretty in pink and it is such a suitable colour for a young girl, I always think. I am sure young George Osborne was impressed. How could he not be? And Mrs Carlyle has secured Isabella an invitation to the Osbornes’ next At Home. George has two sisters, you know. It is important that our dear daughter makes a favourable impression upon them, after all, if everything goes to plan, she will be, in time ... family.”
“Will she?”
Mr Thorpe frowns. It seems like only the other day they were having a conversation about his daughter’s future. Now, the future appears to have arrived in the present.
“And what does Izzy say? Does she like this George fellow?”
“We call her Isabella now, remember? Izzy was for when she was a child.”
Mr Thorpe has a sudden memory of a pretty ringleted girl in a white frock, climbing on his knee, and demanding imperiously to listen to his pocket watch ticking. His little Izzy. Where did the time go?
“Isabella knows that George Osborne is quite a catch. He is handsome, and his father owns a private bank. Why, half the women in London have their eye on him for their daughters. And he looks so fine in his uniform.” Mrs Thorpe gives a tinkly half-laugh. “It takes me back to my youth. We had a garrison of the Ninth Hussars stationed nearby – all the girls were in love with a redcoat.”
“But Izzy isn’t you,” Mr Thorpe says. “I shouldn’t like to think of her marrying someone she didn’t like, and being unhappy.”
“Isabella will do as she is told,” Mrs Thorpe says tartly. “Mrs Carlyle tells me there are already things being whispered about her – that silly fainting business, the quizzical way she looks at people, and does not encourage friendship amongst other girls. We cannot let the impression get about that she is odd or different in any way, or she will never find a husband. It is not a question of like or dislike. Isabella must be guided by her Mamma and Papa. As was I.”
And with this emphatic pronouncement, Mrs Thorpe rolls over onto her side. An indication that the conversation is at an end. This is usually greeted by Mr Thorpe as a welcome sign that he can finally fall asleep. But tonight, he remains wide awake, listening to the endless rain, and thinking about what his wife has just unwittingly revealed.
****
Meanwhile, in another bedroom in St John’s Wood, another wakeful soul is also finding it hard to fall asleep. Josephine lies upon her back, staring up at the ceiling. She is aware of her breathing, surrounding her like an envelope. She listens to the rain falling, the clop of hooves and grind of wheels as a late carriage passes beneath her window. A bell in a distant church chimes the hour.
She also hears the noises of the house. Water moving in pipes, the creak of floorboards. A door suddenly swings open. She screams, sitting bolt upright, nerves pulled tight. But it is only her wardrobe door, which she had not closed firmly enough. She sees her ghost hanging in its mirror.
Josephine slips out of bed and goes to the dressing table. Opening the top drawer, she takes out the diamond. Her diamond. It glows softly, catching photons of stray light. Nothing human could be so beautiful, she thinks. She feels a need to keep it close, to protect it. She returns to her bed. The diamond sleeps in the cagework of her hand.
****
The next morning finds Isabella Thorpe seated in the dining room. She is surrounded by silver-domed dishes containing bacon, scrambled eggs, chops and kedgeree.
In front of her is a rack of toast, and there is butter and marmalade in small cut-glass dishes. The table is positively groaning with all the ingredients that go to make a good middle-class Victorian breakfast.
Isabella is also groaning with the effort of trying to force down a very small slice of plain unbuttered toast and a cup of black tea. She is under strict instructions from her Mama to eat breakfast, a meal she usually avoids at all costs.
After breakfast, she and her Mama are going shopping for a new winter dress. Something becoming, her Mama says. Something that will transfer her daughter’s feet from under the Thorpe table to under somebody else's table, Isabella thinks. Oh yes, she isn’t fooled for a moment.
In the afternoon, she is to call upon the Misses Eliza and Harriet Osborne, sisters of George Osborne, who have let it be known that they will be ‘At Home’ to visitors from three o'clock. Isabella sips her tea, and rearranges the crusts on her plate. Her Mama might try to get her feet under someone else’s table, she thinks grimly, but she can't make her eat.
She forces down another miniscule mouthful, then rises from her chair.
“I’ve finished and I am going to my room,” she tells the housemaid, who bobs a curtsey.
Ignoring the usual head-spinning, stars-in-front-of-her-eyes sensation that always accompanies climbing any stairs, Isabella enters her room, and sits down at her dressing table to await the arrival of Withers, the lady’s-maid. While she waits, sh
e plans her itinerary for the forthcoming visit.
She will stay at the Osbornes’ ‘At Home’ just long enough not to cause offence. She will pretend to partake of the light refreshments on offer. She will make vapid conversation about nothing in particular. Fifteen minutes later, she will take her leave.
For Isabella has discovered that the Osbornes reside just a stone’s throw from Red Lion Square, which is where Henry Papperdelli lives. The discovery fills her with light and joy. She has already sent him a note suggesting that they might meet at the corner of the Square at a quarter past three.
She can actually sense her heart beating faster at the prospect, as if it is marking the time until the desired event takes place. She has not seen him for days and days, and she thinks about him constantly. It feels as if something is eating away inside her. The irony is not lost. Hearing Withers’ light step outside her bedroom, Isabella carefully wipes all joy from her face, leaving it bland and expressionless.
****
A couple of hours later, Detective Sergeant Jack Cully is returning to Scotland Yard having enjoyed a hearty luncheon. Easily recognisable as a member of the police force in his buttoned-up navy topcoat with its distinctive silver buttons, he has adopted the ‘walk-fast-and-look–worried’ pose that he hopes will prevent members of the public from stopping him in the street, and bothering him with their problems.
Jack Cully knows nothing about troublesome drains, cats up trees and the annoying behaviour of lodgers. He does know that his feet and hands are cold, and he is gasping for a mug of hot, well-stewed black tea. So it is with some exasperation that he feels a hand laid gently on his sleeve, and hears a voice saying,
“Excuse me, officer? Could I trouble you for a word?”
Cully turns, and sees a woman standing on the pavement. She has a neat, well-cut dark street dress and a check wool shawl, and her luxuriant dark hair is pinned up under a smart bonnet.
Her clothes say she is a respectable member of the working community. Her sumptuous bosom, bold black eyes and full red lips suggest something rather different. Cully recognises her type instantly. Oh yes.
“Well, madam, what do you want?” he says coldly, laying emphasis upon the second word to indicate that he, Jack Cully, is a man of the world, and he knows exactly whom he is dealing with here.
The woman laughs. She takes a small pasteboard rectangle out of her reticule, and hands it to him.
“My business card,” she says briskly.
Cully reads:
The Lily Lounge (select tea-room)
12 Flask Walk
off Hampstead High Street
London NW3
(Mrs L. Marks, proprietress)
“Oh ... err,” he stutters. “How may I help you, Mrs Marks?”
Lilith regards his discomfited expression with infinite satisfaction.
“I believe I have some important information to impart,” she says.
She beckons him closer, whispers into his ear. And then watches as his eyes widen in amazement.
Detective Inspector Stride has just lit his third pipe of the day, when the door to his office opens and Jack Cully enters. Wearily, Stride glances up from the piles of reports, which he is now rearranging into different piles of reports, in the hope that the something he may have missed first time around might suddenly and magically present itself.
“There is a lady in the interview room,” Cully says. “She wants to talk to you.”
****
Meanwhile, Isabella Thorpe, having successfully evaded the malign clutches of luncheon, arrives at the Osbornes’ town house precisely upon the stroke of three. Here she is shown into the dusk-rose-coloured drawing room, where she perches on a hard rosewood chair and tries not to wilt under the watchful-eyed scrutiny of Eliza and Harriet Osborne.
George’s two sisters are wearing identical dresses in bright mauve, currently a very fashionable colour but one that is hard to pull off, especially in the case of Harriet the older one, whose face at twenty-nine is starting to lose its youthful bloom, and to take on a pinched, tight-lipped expression.
Both women have dark corkscrew curls, small dark suspicious eyes and horsey acquisitive teeth. They sit side by side on the sofa, regarding Isabella as if she was some strange species that they had never encountered before.
Isabella has the distinct impression that they are mentally putting little red crosses against the bits of her that they don’t like. And they clearly don’t like very many bits. Conversation is difficult and stilted. They have absolutely nothing in common, and the Osbornes do not do ‘small talk’. Fortunately, there is a clock on the mantelpiece, so she can keep tally of the minutes, which are passing ... very ... very slowly.
“Georgie tells us you’ve recently returned from France, Miss Thorpe,” Harriet remarks. “I went to Paris once.” She says the word Paris in exactly the same tone of voice in which she might have said sewer.
“It is a delightful city, I think,” Isabella replies.
“Do you? Food was disgustin’. They don’t hunt much, the French.”
“I believe they do not.”
“We love huntin’. Do you hunt, Miss Thorpe?”
Isabella shakes her head.
“Georgie always hunts whenever he’s in the country. Do you ride, Miss Thorpe?”
“I’m afraid not.”
An awkward silence falls.
“I say, why do you keep looking at the mantelpiece?” Eliza asks.
“Oh, I ... was admiring the little china Cupid,” Isabella lies.
“Really? Can’t stand it myself.”
Oh God, deliver me, please, Isabella prays.
And as if God has heard her, the door suddenly opens.
“Miss Violet Monk,” the servant announces.
A second later a tall, rangy young woman with a weather-beaten expression and muddy boots bundles in, followed by two tumbling puppies. Eliza and Harriet immediately jump to their feet uttering squawks of delight, and fall upon the puppies as if they were sugar-plums.
Nobody notices Isabella as she creeps unobtrusively from the room. Out in the street it has started to rain. Luckily, she has had the foresight to bring an umbrella. She opens it, and walks as fast as she can in the direction of Red Lion Square.
And there, standing on the corner, is Henry. He sees her, and raises his hat in greeting. And suddenly Isabella feels bright and clear, like a piece of glass. Touch her, and she will shatter with happiness.
Love is blind, so they say. Or at least, it is not as observant as it should be in the circumstances. So enraptured is Isabella by the sight of Henry Papperdelli that she fails to notice a striking red-haired young woman in a black bonnet making her way towards Russell Square.
It is only as the young woman passes by, rain dripping from her bonnet, that Isabella recognises her. Their eyes meet. Both colour up. Isabella is the first to regain her composure. She turns her face to one side, cutting Josephine, who walks on, head held high.
“Who was that young lady we just passed?” Henry asks, as they turn into Red Lion Square. “She seemed to know you.”
Isabella shrugs and smiles sweetly up at him.
“I've never seen her before in my life,” she says.
****
Still puzzling over her unexpected encounter with Isabella and her even more unexpected behaviour, Josephine arrives at her destination, number 55 Russell Square. She has decided to revisit the house where the mysterious Countess is residing, in the hope that today, the lady (or maybe one of her servants) will be at home.
For a moment she stands outside, screwing up her courage to sticking point. Then, squaring her shoulders, she marches up the steps to the front door and knocks smartly. This time she does not have to wait long before the sound of heavy footsteps approach the door, which opens to reveal a manservant.
He is big – the sort of big that makes the rest of the world look small. Tall and broad-shouldered and grey. Josephine has never seen such a grey man. Iron-gr
ey hair, grey clipped moustache, cold grey eyes that stare down at her in a grey unfriendly manner. Grey trousers, topped by a grey coat with a lot of ornate gold braid. One of his hands is wrapped in a cloth bandage. Something stirs at the back of her mind. Unlikely though it is, she is sure she has seen him before, and recently so.
“Yerss?”
She takes a step back.
“Umm ... I was wondering whether I might leave a card.”
The grey manservant frowns dubiously.
“Perhapss.”
Josephine smiles brightly, taking the little pasteboard square from her reticule.
“The Countess is at home?” she inquires. “Because I was …”
“She iss about to go out,” the manservant says. He takes her card.
“Goot bye.”
He closes the door. Heavy footsteps retreat into silence. Well, she thinks, at least she has made contact. Now etiquette dictates that the Countess will leave her card, and then they will actually meet, and she will finally find out how this mysterious Romanian Countess knew Uncle Herbert and why she wanted to look at a copy of his Will.
****
At about the same time as Josephine is making her way back to St John's Wood, Lilith Marks emerges from Scotland Yard. She secures a hansom and gives the driver directions. She needs to be back at the tea-room as soon as possible. The afternoon rush will be at its height.
Lilith eases herself into the cracked leather seat, reflecting upon what she has just done. She knows she has made the right decision, though it went against the grain of a past when her relationship with the forces of law and order had been very different indeed.
As the cab trots its way through the congested city streets, she thinks about Herbert King, the lover with gentle hands and laughing eyes. She recalls the look on his face as they made love, the sweetness of his body on hers. The way he paced himself, holding back until she experienced her own pleasure at the moment of climax.