The pawnshop bell rang stridently as they entered from the street. They made an ill-matched group, thought Sally, with Estée’s shabby clothes contrasting sharply with her own neat costume. Stephen simply looked uncomfortable, as she supposed she did herself; to someone brought up as she had been, the mere thought of entering such a place was like the first step on the slippery slope to destruction. It did not help that the interior of the shop was dark and smelled of bad drains. No doubt, thought Sally, they were too close to the river.
A young woman sat on a stool behind the counter, reading a book which she set aside as they approached. She looked at Estée, then at Sally standing directly behind her. Recognition was swiftly followed by confusion, which she tried and failed to hide.
‘Good afternoon.’
‘I’ve come to redeem a pledge,’ said Estée in Ostermarkan. ‘A gold star-shaped pendant.’ She took a handful of coins out of her purse. The woman swept them across the counter and opened the ledger where the pledges were recorded.
‘Your ticket, please.’
‘I don’t have it,’ said Estée. ‘It was stolen from me.’
The assistant closed the pledge book. ‘Then I am afraid I cannot help you. You need the ticket. It is your security—as your pledge is ours.’
‘I’ve been coming to this shop for months! Look.’ Estée opened her purse and let out a flutter of pink tickets. ‘I’ve got every ticket you ever gave me except the one for the pendant. You must remember it. It was only three days ago.’
‘I remember you,’ said the woman reluctantly. ‘But I do not remember the pledge. We have many customers. I cannot be expected to keep track of every item that crosses this counter.’
‘There were smells in the drains,’ said Estée. ‘I asked you about them. It was raining—the night the procurator was murdered. Surely you remember that.’ The woman merely looked blank. Estée turned helplessly back to Stephen and Sally.
‘She says she can’t return the pendant without the pawn ticket.’
‘Let me try.’ Sally stepped forward. She started speaking to the assistant in what sounded to the others like Russian. The conversation went on furiously for a minute or two, and then, to Stephen and Estée’s astonishment, the woman turned and went out to the office at the back.
‘How did you know she spoke Russian?’ demanded Estée.
Sally shrugged. ‘It was a fair guess. She is a Russian Jew, or her employers are. I could tell from the name over the door.’
‘What did you tell her?’ asked Stephen.
‘I said that we are twins, separated at birth,’ said Sally. ‘I told her each of us was given half of a locket, and that we need Estée’s half to prove our identity and reclaim our family fortune.’
‘And she believed that?’ Stephen was frankly incredulous.
Sally pointed to the book on the counter. ‘She’s obviously of a romantic turn of mind. If I worked in a place like this, I think I’d be reading books like that, too.’
The door behind the counter opened, and the three of them turned expectantly as the assistant came out.
‘I am sorry. I think you must be mistaken. I do not have what you are looking for.’
‘What?’ exclaimed Estée. ‘What do you mean, you don’t have it?’
‘It is not in the safe. I do not think we ever had it.’
‘But it’s here, in the pledge book!’ Estée slammed her fist down on the enormous ledger. Sally laid a warning hand on her arm. She spoke once more in Russian, but the assistant’s face had closed off and it was clear she was getting nowhere.
‘Tell her I am from the British Legation,’ said Stephen at last. ‘Tell her my uncle is the British Minister, and that if this matter is not cleared up there will be official trouble.’
‘I’ll try, but I don’t think it’s going to make any difference. She’s telling the truth, I think.’ Sally relayed the message, and the woman replied. ‘She says she will pay ten Ostermarkan crowns in compensation, and that you must sign a piece of paper to release her from any further obligation.’
The three of them looked at each other.
‘Take it,’ said Stephen. ‘We’re not going to get any further with this, Estée. At least it will give you some money.’
‘I suppose so.’ Estée nodded. The woman drew out a piece of paper from beneath the counter and began to write on it. Five minutes later, the transaction concluded, they were on Quay Street, standing beneath the rose-laden window boxes of the perfume shop next door. Estée was almost in tears.
‘It was there,’ she said. ‘She put it in the safe. It was written down in the pledge book, and I had to sign it. I can’t believe this has happened. How could I have been such a fool?’
‘I notice she didn’t let us actually look in the book,’ said Stephen. Estée caught on at once.
‘You think someone else has used my ticket to redeem the pledge?’
‘No,’ said Sally. ‘If it had been crossed off in the book, I think she would have told us. Don’t forget, she went to check in the safe. I must admit it’s very strange. And there’s something else. I never thought about it until this afternoon, but I’m right about it being the back of a locket, aren’t I? My half is slightly hollow on one side, and there’s a broken clip that I think must have been the catch. I wonder what was originally inside it?’
‘And why it was broken in the first place,’ said Estée. She laughed shortly. ‘It sounds like the worst sort of cheap novelette. Twin sisters, separated at birth, a missing talisman, a mysterious theft. It’s like a bad joke gone wrong. The next step is to put the pieces back together and find out we’re princesses in disguise.’
‘Well, we’re not going to be doing that, are we?’ said Sally. ‘All the same, I think I’d better get my half out of the legation safe. Mr Melhuish, do you know where it is?’
‘It’s in an annexe to my uncle’s office.’
‘Then I shall have to think about how to get in there. I really don’t dare ask my father. And now, I must go home. My mother has been out, and I have to get back before she does. Will you hail me a cab, please, Mr Melhuish? I think that’s one coming now.’
Sure enough, a cab was approaching. Stephen flagged it down and helped Sally into it. Estée told the driver the address. The cab turned around in the street and they stood watching as it drove away.
‘Tell me,’ said Estée, without taking her eyes off the disappearing vehicle. ‘What do you make of this?’
‘In what way?’ asked Stephen, though he knew what she meant well enough. Estée half turned and plucked a few crimson petals off the roses in the window box outside the perfumerie. Someone would have to come out soon and take them back to whatever hothouse they had come from, she thought; there was no way they would last the night out in the open. She let them flutter to the ground and resolutely turned to face her companion.
‘I mean, what do you think this is all about? Why do we look the same—exactly the same? You don’t have to spare my feelings, you know. There can only be one answer. We have to be twins.’
‘Well…it did occur to me that you might be adopted,’ said Stephen. He found it difficult to say this, for it was a possibility that could only prove painful if it turned out to be true. But Estée had no such reservations.
‘That’s what I wondered, too. But then I thought, no, this can’t be right. I know I’m my mother’s daughter. And if that’s the case, if I really am my mother’s child, then Sally Taverner has to be as well. And I know, as surely as I’m standing here, that there is nothing that would ever have made my mother give a child of hers away.’
‘You don’t know what the circumstances were—’ began Stephen, but Estée shook her head decisively.
‘It doesn’t matter what the circumstances were. My mother was not like that. My father used to say I was the two eyes in her head. He always complained that she was spoiling me.’
‘I’m sorry.’ It occurred to Stephen that guilt over giving up a baby might
very well make a mother behave overindulgently towards any child that remained. It would, however, be clearly out of order for him to point this out.
They walked away together down the street. He said, ‘About your birth certificate. There’s another way of finding out. If your father was a British citizen, and you were born in Starberg, your birth would have been registered at the legation. If you like, I can look through the records for you. That should settle the matter once and for all. Is this the right way?’ The street ahead was blocked off by a long warehouse, but dog-legged down to the left into a smaller lane that sloped towards the water. Estée paused to get her bearings.
‘We should probably have gone in the other direction. It doesn’t matter though. We can walk back along the river.’ She turned into the lane and Stephen followed her. A flight of steps took them down to an embankment and a footpath that ran alongside the river, the backs of the Quay Street houses now to their left. It was damp and, with an early dusk drawing in, had an unattractive prospect over the Ling. The footpath itself was narrow and the surrounds rather seedy looking.
Stephen wrinkled his nose. ‘What an awful smell.’
‘It’s the river, I suppose,’ said Estée. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself, shivering. A stiff breeze was blowing off the water, and her coat, bought in New Zealand for a milder climate, was less than equal to the challenge. ‘Come on. Let’s get moving. I’m cold.’
She headed off quickly along the footpath, her head down and her hands in her pockets. Stephen hesitated, but only for a moment. It was not really dark, after all, nor was it a particularly rough neighbourhood. He would have been happier, however, if there had been other people on the footpath.
‘The tide’s in, you know,’ he said, catching up with her. ‘I don’t think it can be the river. Maybe it’s the drains.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Estée. ‘There was a horrible smell in the shop, too.’ She stopped so suddenly in the middle of the path that Stephen, a step behind, almost walked into her.
‘Estée! What’s wrong?’
‘The smell,’ said Estée, in a smothered voice. ‘I’ve just remembered where else I’ve smelled it. It was in the lodging house in Castle Street, on the night of the opera riot. The night the police think my father died.’ Her face had gone very white and Stephen saw the fear in her brown eyes. ‘This was a mistake. We shouldn’t have come this way. We should have used the street.’
‘It was your idea.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. Please, can we go back?’ As Estée spoke, Stephen heard a distant sound, as of a metal gate closing. For no apparent reason, the hair on the back of his neck stood up, and, as he looked back over his shoulder along the path they had taken, he was seized by a conviction that their passage had not gone unnoticed.
A light fog began to rise from the river. It was not much at first, just a drift of white vapour that floated across the path around their ankles, but Stephen knew it should not have been there at all. It was not the weather for fog; the wind should have broken it up in an instant. Imperceptibly, Stephen edged closer to Estée and, before he knew what he was doing, reached for her hand. He was surprised when she took it, but then he caught what she had undoubtedly heard first. It was the sound of someone approaching along the path, as softly as a thief, in the fog and growing darkness.
Stephen turned. The fog was now so thick it was hard to see anything properly, not the river, nor the backs of the Quay Street buildings. And there were shapes moving in it, three or four of them, all dressed in dark clothing. A patch of fog cleared momentarily, and one shape stepped into full view. Stephen saw that it was a young man, perhaps in his early twenties, with fair Ostermarkan hair and a black uniform with red flashings. The clothes, covered by an ankle-length cloak, had a vaguely old-fashioned style about them and seemed familiar, but in a country that was obsessed with uniforms, Stephen was unable immediately to place them. That was surprising, for the strangest thing about the ensemble was its complete lack of footwear. On a filthy river path, in the middle of an Ostermarkan winter, the fellow was completely barefoot.
He was holding something in his left hand. Stephen could not see what it was, but the man lifted it in front of him and said something in a gently mocking tone. Stephen, naturally, could not understand a word of it. Consequently, he was completely unprepared for what happened next. Estée gave a great cry and darted forward. The fog opened and swallowed her, and as her name rose to his lips a flaming missile streaked out of the fog, like a firework, and struck him full in the chest.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The force of the impact blew Stephen off his feet and hurled him clear through the air. If he had landed on the pavement he would have smashed his skull or broken his back or neck. Instead, he flew backwards a full fifteen feet over the embankment and landed with an explosive splash in the river.
The shock of hitting the water blew the breath out of his lungs. Stephen went under, surfaced again, and gasped instinctively for breath. The intake of air was like a knife going into his lungs, and it flashed through his head that he must have been shot. But there was no pain, no blood in the water, and if a gun had been fired he had not heard the report. Stephen flailed in the icy water for something to hold onto. Through the fog he could hear screams and the sounds of a scuffle on the path, but he could not see anything, not even the wall of the embankment. His heavy winter clothes were dragging him down, and he was such a poor swimmer it was all he could do to keep his head above the water.
Then his right hand struck something solid. It was the embankment wall, and as he found the edge and began to claw himself out of the water, there was a sound of violent shouting and running feet. Suddenly, a woman’s shape appeared in the fog above him. A slim, strong hand gripped Stephen’s arm and began dragging him out onto dry land; he flopped onto the embankment path, gasping for breath. The woman paused a second to check that he was all right, then vanished into the fog again.
Stephen staggered to his feet. He could not see what was happening, but he could still hear Estée shouting for help, and so he blundered forward in the general direction of her cries, his wet clothes flapping heavily against his body. A second fireball shot out of the mist, but this one missed, if it had been aimed at him in the first place, and a third exploded on the footpath near his feet. A dark cloak materialised in front of him and he grabbed it, throwing punches by guesswork and connecting twice. His antagonist drew his arm back like a cricketer. Stephen kicked out instinctively. His feet tangled in his assailant’s legs and there was a strange sudden sizz that died in the man’s hand as he tripped and fell to the ground.
‘Stephen! Stephen!’
Stephen had gone down with his assailant, and was struggling with him on the footpath. At the sound of Estée’s voice he looked up. She was being dragged off through the fog, fighting and kicking, by a man fully twice her size. Stephen yelled back, and redoubled his efforts to free himself. Before he could twist free from his attacker, another man in grey workman’s clothes appeared, apparently out of nowhere. He had a revolver in his hand, and he lifted his arm and fired it without hesitation at the man who was abducting Estée. Estée’s attacker dropped like a stone onto the pavement. As Stephen cried out in shock, the man he was struggling with himself shoved him violently backwards, leapt to his feet, and fled.
Estée had fallen down with her captor. A moment later she was up on her feet again, her arms wrapped around her head, screaming hysterically at the dead body at her feet. Stephen ran up to her and dragged her away, shielding her face from the horrible sight. The dead man lay on the footpath in a spreading welter of blood and brains. It made him want to vomit, just to look at it. Meanwhile, the man with the gun looked around to make sure the other attackers had fled. When he had satisfied himself that they were gone, he tucked his revolver into his coat pocket and walked towards them.
‘Not bad,’ he said to Stephen, in fluent, accented English. ‘You fought quite well, under the circumstances.’
Stephen snorted. ‘You don’t play the piano and go to a public school without learning to defend yourself.’ As he replied, the woman who had pulled him out of the river came running up to them, her breath steaming in the cold. She had grey-green eyes and fair, freckled skin, and below the white scarf tied around her head was what appeared to be a fringe of dark red hair. Neither she nor her companion looked at all like the conventional idea of an Ostermarkan, but while the man was dark, bearded and rather threateningly unkempt, the woman had a kind, even friendly face. Given the circumstances of their meeting, thought Stephen, this was rather an odd thing.
‘They’re gone,’ the woman reported. Her accent was far stronger than the man’s, more obviously Ostermarkan. To Stephen’s surprise, Estée visibly relaxed.
‘Why, it’s you!’ she said, and she turned to Stephen. ‘We’ve met before. This is Mrs Barker, Bridget Barker. She’s a sort of relation of mine.’
‘A relation? I thought you had no family here in Starberg.’
‘All right. A friend.’
‘I’m yet to be convinced of that.’
‘You must take a lot of convincing then,’ said the man sourly. ‘In case it escaped your notice, we just saved your life.’
‘Miss Merton, may I introduce my husband, Mr Michael Barker,’ said Bridget. ‘Your companion, I think, is Mr Stephen Melhuish, nephew of the British Minister to Starberg. But we have no time to talk about this now. The fog your attackers summoned has almost gone and it will not do to be found here with a freshly killed corpse. Also, it is getting dark, and when night falls this man’s companions will return to collect him. We have to get under cover. The other girl, Miss Taverner. She left in a hired carriage. Where was she going?’
‘Home,’ said Stephen. ‘I imagine by now she should be there.’
‘Then someone must follow and make sure she is safe,’ said Bridget. ‘Michael, you go after her. I’ll take the others with me. Matters are moving too quickly now to delay. We must ask Aunt Anna what to do next.’
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