by C. J. Archer
I froze. Matt, however, worked faster, flicking through the cards.
"The game is up, I'm afraid," Garnet said. "We have to tell him after all. I'm sure he won't mind when he sees your donation." She jiggled the pocket with the coins.
"Just a few minutes," Matt said, his fingers flying through the records.
But a few minutes would not be enough. I touched his arm. "We'll attempt to convince him," I said gently.
"Down here, Mr. Woolley," Garnet called. "I'm helping a young lady find information about her grandfather."
"You're doing what?" He trotted down the steps and emerged into our circle of light. He glanced at me then Matt, still rifling through the cards. "You again!"
"I know it's not your policy to allow members of the public down here, Mr. Woolley." Garnet dug some of the coins out of her pocket. "But they offered a generous donation."
"Why didn't you come to see me first before letting them in?" He grabbed Matt's shoulder. "Stop that at once! You can't go through those. It's private information."
"She only wants to find out about her grandfather," Garnet said, no longer sounding sure.
"A likely story." Mr. Woolley grabbed Matt's shoulder again and attempted to wrench him away from the filing cabinet. Matt didn't budge. "Get out before I summon a constable!"
Garnet gasped. I felt sorry for her. We'd put her in an awkward position. But we'd come this far and, like Matt, I didn't want to walk away without answers. We were just too close. Wilson must have spent nights here when it was a doss house. It was too unlikely that there'd been another in Bethnal Green.
Desperate times called for desperate actions. I leaned toward Matt. "Get ready to grab and run," I whispered.
His gaze slipped to me. He inclined his head and gathered up a stack of records while blocking Woolley's view with his body.
I placed my hand to my forehead. "Oh dear, I feel faint. All this excitement…" I lurched in Mr. Woolley's direction.
He would have easily caught a slight woman, but my fuller figure worked in my favor for once and he could not hold up against the full force of my weight. He stumbled backward, losing his balance. I would have fallen with him if not for Matt's arm circling my waist. He steadied me and we ran off together, past a flustered Garnet and up the stairs.
"Stop!" Mr. Woolley cried. "They have the records!"
"What does it matter?" Garnet whined. "They're old ones."
We didn't hear if Mr. Woolley answered her. I doubt he told her the real reason he was so protective of the old records—they could prove the shelter and its sponsors were cheating the government out of funds by lying about the number of homeless that came through the doors.
We ran through the men's ward and outside. The day seemed so bright after the dimness of the cellar.
"Home," Matt barked at the coachman. "Drive fast and take an indirect route. Look out for anyone following." He clambered into the carriage after me and thumped on the ceiling before I had the door closed. The coachman took off just as Mr. Woolley emerged from the shelter, shaking his fist.
Matt deposited the armful of cards on the seat beside him and tried to keep them in a neat stack as we turned corners and he peered out the back window.
"Is he following us?" I asked.
"No, nor is Payne that I can see."
I'd forgotten about him. Fortunately Matt had not.
A few blocks later, Matt turned to me. "We're safe." He grinned, banishing the worry and tiredness and making him look so very handsome. "That was your plan, India? To throw yourself at Woolley?"
"To knock him off balance. It worked, didn't it?"
"The margin for error was large."
"As am I. The odds were in my favor."
"You are not large by any stretch of the imagination. You're generous in all the right places." His gaze dipped to one of those places but quickly returned to my face—my hot face. He didn't blush at all, merely grinned wider. The devil.
"Did you get them all?" I asked, nodding at the records. There must have been hundreds of the palm-sized cards, yellowed with age, beneath his hand.
"I checked a good number before we were rudely interrupted. These are the remaining ones. At least it'll give us something to do this afternoon while we wait for nightfall."
"I'm still not convinced you should break into Lady Buckland's house."
"I'll go while you're asleep. You won't even be aware of my absence."
"Sleep won't come easily to me tonight, I can assure you. If you had any care for my nerves, you would abandon your scheme."
"Your nerves are stronger than you let on. If they weren't, I wouldn't have told you my plans. Shall I refrain from sharing the details next time?"
He had me there. I'd rather be aware of his activities and worry than be kept in the dark. "Take Duke and Cyclops with you. If Willie goes too, tell her to leave her gun behind."
"There's a good chance she may not be home anyway. She seems to spend much of the time elsewhere lately. Do you think she has a paramour?"
"What other explanation is there?"
"But it's so unlike her to…" He shrugged and did not go on.
"Fall in love?" I offered. "Have tender feelings? It does seem unlikely, but I do think there's a soft heart beating beneath the prickles. I'm just sorry it's not soft on Duke. He'll be crushed if she casts him aside in favor of her secret lover."
"I'm not sure Duke ever had much of a chance with her."
"Oh? Why not?"
Another shrug. "Just a feeling."
I expected a letter from Patience to be waiting for me when we arrived home, but there was no word. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or bad. Was Patience upset with me for mentioning her past? Was it already too late and Payne had told Lord Cox about her indiscretion? Or did silence mean all was in hand and steps were being taken to protect her reputation? I was wildly curious but could only wait.
Matt and I stacked the records on the large table in the library and then I sent him to his room to rest. Chronos joined me instead, bringing in a plate of sandwiches for the two of us to share.
"Shouldn't you be convalescing?" I asked, plucking the first card off the pile. A name, date of birth, last known address and a list of dates were written in a tight scrawl. The information from the nightly register had been transferred to these cards to monitor the number of times the residents used the shelter, so Mr. Woolley told us. He and his predecessors didn't want the "undeserving" to take advantage.
"I feel well enough to be up and about." Chronos lowered himself onto a chair with a sharp intake of breath. "Besides, Miss Glass doesn't come in here much."
"I thought you enjoyed her company."
He tapped his temple. "She's not all there."
"Only sometimes. At others, she's perfectly normal, if a little snobby. I thought you liked playing poker with her."
"She's too bloody good."
I laughed. "She fleeced you?"
"It's not amusing."
"It is from where I'm sitting." I handed him a card. "Be of use and help me go through these while we eat. You're looking for a man with the first name of Wilson, not last."
He arched a brow. "I hadn't considered that."
"Nor did we until today."
With an egg and cucumber sandwich in one hand, Chronos picked up cards in the other and read each one before setting it aside. I followed suit and we got through most of the pile and all of the sandwiches in twenty minutes. It felt like longer, however, since we did not talk.
"You did a good job with the clocks in the house," he finally said. "They're all working perfectly."
"Thank you. It was nothing."
"Of course I expect them to work well after a powerful magician tinkers with them."
I narrowed my gaze at him. "Is this leading somewhere?"
He smirked. "Clever as well as powerful. Pity you're not a man."
"That's insulting."
He held up his hands. "It's merely an observation. A clever and powerful ma
n can get ahead in the world. He is admired and highly sought after in both his professional and private life. A clever and powerful woman is seen as unnatural by both men and other women."
"Thank you for pointing that out to me. I wasn't aware I was freak until now."
"There's no need for sarcasm. I didn't say I saw you as unnatural."
"I don't care if you do—or if anyone else does, either. I don't see myself that way and nor do my friends."
He nodded slowly, emphatically. "I admire you for that, India. You get that from me. I never cared what others thought either."
"The difference is, you didn't care about others at all. I don't care for opinions, but I don't neglect anyone."
"We're revisiting that argument again, are we?"
I lowered the card I'd been reading. "Why shouldn't we? It's important."
"That's the problem with young people these days. Always blaming the parents for your problems. Grandparents, in this case."
"I'm not blaming you for how my life turned out. I'm blaming you for how poorly you treated my grandmother, your wife. You abandoned her. It's not easy for a woman alone."
"She wasn't alone, she had your parents. And I already told you, she was better off without me. If she were here now, she'd say the same thing. She'd be shooing me out the door, injuries and all, without a care for who waited outside."
I checked the card and set it aside. I reached for the next one at the same time as Chronos and our fingers touched. I quickly withdrew my hand and he plucked off the next card with a sigh.
"Speaking of people waiting for you," I said, "you have to be careful. Don't leave the house at all. Don't even poke your head out the door. Matt has ordered the staff not to mention you to anyone and told them to come to him immediately if someone asks questions about the patient we're harboring."
"Bloody Abercrombie," he growled. "And that fool you almost married."
"It's not just them. The police asked us whether you were still alive and if I'd been in touch with you. Abercrombie must have tipped them off."
He lowered the card. "You won't tell them, will you?"
"Of course not."
"If I go to jail, I'll die there."
"Actually you're more likely to die on the scaffold as a murderer." I immediately regretted my quip when he paled. "Don't throw up on the cards."
He set down the card and laid his hand over mine. I glanced up at him but regretted making eye contact. He looked too serious, too heartfelt. I preferred the niggling banter. "I want you to know I've made a will and had the butler sign it as my witness. You're named as my heir."
My jaw went slack. "I…I…"
"It's all right." He smiled and patted my hand. "You can continue to scold me, it won't change anything."
"I see."
"Do you?" He sat back, wincing at the pain, and regarded me. "The thing is, I am not dead, which means I still own the shop."
"Everyone thinks you're dead so that is a moot point."
"Several people know I am alive."
"You just told me you have no plans of getting caught and going to jail, which means you have to remain dead, for all intents and purposes."
"Or I could be known to be alive yet escape the authorities and leave the country."
"Impossible," I said, my tone snippy. "It's too much of a risk. You'll continue to be dead as far as the authorities are concerned. It doesn't matter about the shop. I can't sell timepieces anyway, without guild membership, and the guild are hardly going to allow me in now. Besides, I'm gainfully employed here."
"Until Glass returns to America."
"I'll remain his aunt's companion."
"She'd old, India. She won't last forever. You could marry Glass, you know."
I snatched two cards off the dwindling pile and concentrated very hard on the words and numbers.
He sighed. "Very well, be missish about it. The truth is, you might find you need the income a shop will provide." He held up a finger, halting my protest. "The guild may not oppose you forever. Bear that in mind. Even if they do, you don't need guild membership to lease the space to a shopkeeper. It doesn't even have to be someone in the clock trade. The space could serve a variety of retailers, and I own the premises."
"I'm not sure if your will would be accepted by the courts, considering you're supposed to be dead. Eddie will contest it and I don't know if I have the inclination to fight it, or the money for a lawyer."
He tossed the cards he was holding away. "So you won't even try? I thought you better than that, India. I thought you had a sense of justice and a spine for battle. I see I'm wrong."
"What I have is common sense. I know when to back away from something that could drag through the courts for years. Haven't you read Bleak House?"
"That was written years ago, and Dickens exaggerated for the sake of a good story." He took another card from the stack. "My will is written, and I'll have Glass lodge it with his lawyer. When the time comes, you can do what you want with the information. I'm not going to care, am I?" he bit off.
Duke, Cyclops and Willie entered, and I greeted them weakly. Perhaps I shouldn't have been so hard with Chronos. He was trying to make things right with me, in his own way. He didn't have to make a will in my favor.
"What have you got there?" Cyclops asked, nodding at the cards now spread across the table.
"We're looking for a man with a first name of Wilson." I eyed the thin pile of remaining cards. There were only a dozen or so. "This is our last chance of locating the man Chronos and Millroy experimented on. If this yields no result, we may have to give up on finding out more about him and any family he may have left behind."
"There are still other avenues," Duke said with a questioning look at me. "Still other things we can do to find the killer. Right?"
"We'll think of something." I didn't sound convincing and he didn't look convinced.
Cyclops and Willie inspected the pile of cards. Then they both dove for the topmost one at the same time.
"Here!" Willie cried, doing a tug of war with Cyclops. "This is him! Wilson! Give it to me, Cyclops."
He let go and peered over her shoulder.
"God damn," Willie muttered. She stared at me, her mouth open and her eyes wide.
"What is it?" I said, springing up and grabbing it from her. "What does it say?"
"It says 'Mr. Wilson Sweet,'" she said at the same time as I read the words. "'Last known address: Bright Court, Whitechapel.'"
Chapter 16
"What do you think the chances are that he was Nell Sweet's brother?" I asked Matt as he read over the card. Willie had insisted on waking him, despite my protests. He'd napped for half an hour—hopefully it was enough. He did look refreshed, but the brightness in his eyes could have been due to our breakthrough.
"Very high." He slapped the card against his palm. "Very high indeed."
The others agreed. Chronos even thumped his fist on the table in victory. But I was beginning to have doubts. Nell Sweet hadn't struck me as a murderess. On the other hand, twenty-seven years was a long time. Perhaps she'd changed, as Lady Buckland had changed.
"She killed Dr. Millroy in revenge and stole his belongings to make it look like he'd been murdered for his possessions," Matt said.
"Except the pencil," Willie said.
Matt strode to the door. "Come on, India, let's pay her another visit."
I rushed after him and caught up to him in the entrance hall. "Nell told us her brother was gone, not dead."
Matt sent Peter to inform the coachman that we were in need of the carriage again. "She was lying," he then said to me.
"I agree." Willie plucked her hat off the hat stand and slapped it on her head. "She must be lying. Don't feel bad that you're wrong, India. You know you ain't good at understanding people."
I thrust my hand on my hip but Duke came to my rescue before I could think of a retort.
"She understands that you're rude, Willemina Johnson."
Cyclops
held up a hand to each of them to keep them apart. "Let's not judge until we speak to her."
Matt accepted his coat from Bristow. "Agreed. I take it you're all coming with us."
"Aye," chimed three voices.
Chronos merely sighed. "Think I'll go back to the library and read."
"Bristow, asks Miss Glass to keep Chronos company in the library," I said. "Tell her he'd like to play poker."
Chronos shot me a withering glare over his shoulder as he retreated.
Mary, the partially deaf maid, answered Matt's fierce knocks eventually and after three shouts from Nell to "Get the door!" She took one look at the five of us and attempted to shut it again. Matt thrust out his arm and muscled his way in.
"Stop, sir!" Mary cried. "I been told not to let you in!"
Matt ignored her and led the way to Nell's bedroom. The others followed but I felt compelled to comfort the poor maid. "We just want to talk to your mistress. No one will get hurt."
Matt's angry roar did nothing to support my promise. I left Mary and followed the noise.
"Keep it down," I hushed Matt. "You're scaring Mary and probably alarming the neighbors."
"I don't think the neighbors round here are unused to shouts," Willie said. "Nor murder, neither."
Nell whimpered in the bed and pulled the blanket to her chin. "I ain't done nothing, Mrs. Wright."
"My name is in fact India Steele," I said. "We used false names last time. This is Mr. Glass, my employer."
"I don't care who you are. Just keep him away from me. Keep him away!" She screwed up her eyes tight.
"No one will be hurt," I repeated. "But you must answer some questions we have about…about your brother's murder," I said at the last moment. Perhaps steering the discussion away from Dr. Millroy would get her to trust us if she was indeed guilty.
Matt closed his fists at his sides and lowered his head. He was frustrated, no doubt wanting answers immediately, now that we were so close to finding the diary. He would have to wait. He couldn't beat answers out of an old lady, even if she were a murderess. It was a pity his charm seemed to have deserted him. I would have to try instead.
Nell opened one eye, saw that Matt wasn't standing over her anymore, and sat up. "My brother left me. You telling me he's dead?"