Chapter Ten
The house Mrs. Watson had hired in Paris was situated some seven or eight miles outside the center of the city, in a leafy little community on the Rive Droite of the Seine. A honey-colored villa with a large veranda, it perched right on the bank and enjoyed a wide, panoramic view.
In happier days, Penelope Redmayne had brought her friends and classmates to the house on many a Sunday afternoon to row on the river, stroll along the embankment, or picnic in an open field. A gaggle of young people frolicking around a picnic blanket very much resembled an Impressionist tableau, all blue sky, tall grass, and luminous faces.
Even now the area was lovely, full of the warmth and verdure of summer. Which made the ordeal feel even more like a nightmare, in which everything seemed normal except for a single horrifying change.
Penelope did her best to muster a smile for the hard-faced man who opened the door. “Bonjour, monsieur. I’ve come with your provisions.”
The man squatted down to examine the shopping baskets on the portico. He tapped the baguettes and squeezed the vegetables, the leg of ham, and even the already scaled and gutted fish wrapped in paper. She could only be thankful he handled the eggs and the strawberry tarts with greater care.
“You have no cheese here,” he said with something close to dismay as he straightened. “Bring a Camembert next time. And a good Gruyère, some chèvre, and as much époisses as you can carry.”
“I will deliver all that this afternoon.” Penelope decided she might as well be shameless in currying favors. “Anything else you’d like, monsieur? Beefsteak, lobsters, ice cream? There’s a good wine merchant who is—”
“We do not drink while working,” said the man flatly.
“No, of course not.” She smiled again. “May I go inside now?”
The man glanced behind him. He must have received permission, for he stepped back and let her pass. The woman mercenary patted her down, then escorted her deeper into the house.
She tried to tell herself that her errand was not terribly dangerous: She was not there to secretly reconnoiter or to mount a rescue. But she was dealing with armed individuals, and she did not possess great faith in the agreement Miss Charlotte had brokered with Lord Bancroft.
Before she entered Miss Bernadine’s room, she took a moment to collect herself, so that she would not infect Miss Bernadine with her anxiety.
Inside the room, Miss Bernadine spun her rack of spools. In a peaceful mood, she set one or two spools in motion at a time and put her palm against the revolving spools to feel the friction on her skin. But now a dozen spools spun wildly. Miss Bernadine kept accelerating them, only to knock them against one another in a series of grating clacks to force them to stop.
Mademoiselle Robineau, a woman of fifty with fully grey hair and a kind face, shook her head. “Ah, la pauvre. She’s been like this since she woke up. Last night, too. She misses her walk.”
For most of her life, ever since her parents realized that she was not going to be a normal child, Miss Bernadine had been kept in her room. Her infrequent transits elsewhere had proved difficult, as she balked at stairs.
Miss Charlotte, always willing to try new things, asked Mrs. Watson to put Miss Bernadine in a ground-floor room when Mrs. Watson moved her household to Paris this past February. Without the obstacle of the stairs, Miss Bernadine proved perfectly amenable to walking outside her room for some time every day. After they’d made a ramp with wooden planks, she even went into the garden, where she’d sit contentedly for a while, cranking a reel that had been detached from a fishing rod.
But now she was confined indefinitely to her room.
Miss Bernadine grunted a few times and once again set all the spools to spin, rows upon rows of agitation.
Her appetite, according to Mademoiselle Robineau, was still not good, but no worse than it had been since the mercenaries took over. This was the best news Penelope could report to London: that things hadn’t taken a drastic turn for the worse.
She asked after Mademoiselle Robineau herself. The nurse waved off her concern. “Don’t you worry about me, mademoiselle. I lived through the Siege of Paris. A few criminals don’t scare me.”
The other members of the staff, she said, were also carrying on as best as they could, including Mr. Mears, a captive in his own room.
A knock came. “That’s long enough,” said the woman mercenary.
Penelope glanced at the clock—exactly half an hour had passed. She’d been allowed the minimum stipulated in the agreement and not a minute more.
She stepped into the hall. A loud peal came from the front door.
“Who’s that?” the woman asked Penelope, suspicion in her voice.
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” answered Penelope in all honesty.
The bell clanged again, followed by a boisterous voice. “Anyone home? Open the door! Come quickly, Aunt Watson. Let’s do a bisou-bisou and then I must be off to Paris. Paris proper, that is. You lied in your letter—this isn’t Paris at all! There isn’t a single café concert nearby!”
Who was the clown? Wait, Aunt Watson?
The man who had let Penelope in earlier appeared just as perplexed. He peered out of a narrow window. “Looks like an English toff.”
The unannounced caller certainly sounded like an English toff.
A fist pounded upon the door—a big, meaty fist, by the solid whomps it produced. “Come, come, Aunt Watson. I won’t be young forever, so I must make hay while my youth shines. You can come with, if you promise to behave. Not sure I trust your promise, though, you naughty old gal.”
Penelope’s eyes almost fell out of their sockets. Aunt Jo had not deliberately concealed her past from Penelope, so Penelope had always known about her days in the theater and her protectors. But she’d never heard anyone refer openly to the woman who raised her as “you naughty old gal,” let alone someone who was obviously around Penelope’s age.
The mercenary by the door yanked it open, but before he could ask questions, a big blond Adonis pushed past him and said, “Quick, my man, bring in my luggage. I’ll just say hello to Aunt Watson and be gone.”
The mercenary was not about to do his bidding until he saw the carriage full of young men on the circular drive outside, one of whom, a native speaker of French, demanded to know what was taking so long.
“Une minute. Je reviens!” called the man to his mates in an Englishman’s standard public school French.
He turned around, his attention settling on Penelope. “Why, hello! You must be Miss Redmayne. You probably don’t remember me, but I’m Bobby Fontainebleu, and my father courted Aunt Watson for a while about fifteen, sixteen years ago.”
The surname rang a bell. Aunt Jo had indeed taken a lover at some point after the duke, her last protector, had passed away, but before she’d married Dr. Watson.
“I was all set to have her as my wonderful stepmamma, but she married someone else and broke my heart,” continued young Fontainebleu, whipping off his hat and using it to fan himself. “All the same, we kept in touch. And when she said she was in Paris, I knew I must come and stay with her for a few days. Anyway, I sent a cable about a week ago. Did it go astray?”
Don’t worry, Miss Charlotte had said to Penelope, just before she began her most recent return journey to England. I’ll think of something. I won’t let you shoulder this problem alone.
Had she sent young Fontainebleu?
Penelope glanced at the silver salver on the console table near the door, which usually held correspondence but was now completely empty. “I’m—I’m sure I don’t know anything about your telegram, sir, but it’s been a bit of a madhouse here. Aunt Jo had to go back to London all of a sudden and—”
“What? She’s not here?”
“No—”
“Well, then, I’d better not let my friends wait. We’ve a whole day planned in Paris. Don’t expect me back before three in the morning, and don’t expect me sober. You and I will catch up when I wake up tomorrow. à demain, ma cherie.”
He turned to leave, only to turn around and kiss her on the cheeks, an astonishingly correct French la bise in a whiff of bay rum aftershave. And then he, a tall, broadly built man, somehow flounced out to the waiting vehicle, which then raced off toward the excitement of Paris proper.
Leaving Penelope—and the mercenaries, too—to gape at the disappearing carriage in slack-jawed amazement.
?Mrs. Watson was ready for a stiff drink.
To be sure, since yesterday afternoon she had been inside more pubs than she cared to count. But she’d stuck to either soda water or ginger ale—and not too much of either to avoid visiting the water closet more frequently than necessary.
“Cheer up, this might be the one,” said Lawson.
Her groom and coachman looked nothing like his usual self. Instead, he was now a man of humble birth who had become well-heeled late in life and didn’t want to waste a single moment not being nouveau riche and self-indulgent.
His jacket had too many gold buttons. He wore not one but three watch fobs. And a golden serpent wrapped around his walking stick, its head curving to form the handle.
Mrs. Watson stared at the snake’s green eyes and massaged her temple. “I hope you’re right, old boy. I do hope so.”
They’d ferreted out and visited just about every boxing gymnasium in and near New Cross, in southeast London. But they had to use an oblique approach—Lord Bancroft thinks that a blatant search might set the crown on your trail, Miss Charlotte had said. And Lawson’s story of having heard about a trio of good boxers who had lost their sponsor hadn’t yielded the results they sought.
At the last place they tried, however, the pub owner, his brow furrowed with effort, had said that he recalled being told something similar when he visited his brother in Smithfield.
Think we were at a place called—blast it, can’t remember the name. But I remember the sign over the door. It’s a whale with a great big pointy horn.
Don’t know about that, but there’s a whale that’s got a long tusk, Lawson had answered cautiously. A narwhal.
Must be that then.
Smithfield, part of central London, was a good six miles northwest of New Cross. In this densely populated city, six miles might as well be six countries in terms of distance and character.
But in Smithfield their luck improved. A description of the unusual sign quickly produced directions to the Unicorn of the Sea, with the comment, Always thought that was a fancy-looking sea lion. A tusked whale, eh? Blimey.
And now they were standing outside the Unicorn of the Sea. The painter of the sign had clearly never seen a stuffed narwhal at the Museum of Natural History, let alone a real one. A fancy-looking sea lion—it was swaddled in a scarlet cape—was exactly how Mrs. Watson would have described the image. And the slender tusk wasn’t even situated on the sea lion’s head, but held in a flipper.
“Remember your promise to me, Harry,” she said loudly as Lawson held open the pub’s door for her, “no more than half an hour here. There’s already been too many smelly old gymnasiums on this trip.”
The early rush of workers from the nearby market had left, and the midday customers hadn’t arrived yet. There weren’t many patrons in the pub, and Mrs. Watson’s arrival turned every head. She had on the same elaborate promenade dress she’d worn the summer before, on the day she first spoke to Miss Charlotte. The wide blue silk polonaise, worn over a tiered white underskirt, was perfect for a woman in the role of decorative appendage to a man generous with his money.
A sharp-eyed man of about forty stood behind the bar. They sat down directly in front of him.
He put aside the pint glass he was polishing. “Something to quench your thirst, sir, ma’am?”
“Too early in the day for pints, too late for coffee, and this one,” Lawson pointed at Mrs. Watson, “drinks only the best claret.”
Mrs. Watson traced the tips of her gloved fingers over the enormous white plume in her hat. “Why, thanks to you, darling.”
“That’s right.” Lawson turned his attention to the man. “This your place then, lad? You ever been at sea?”
The nautical theme proliferated inside the pub, with fishing nets hanging from the rafters, rusty anchors in corners, and fishermen’s lanterns on the walls.
“It’s been my place these past five years,” said the pub owner, “but I bought it from an old sailor.”
“And did the old sailor also start a boxing gymnasium?”
The publican smiled slightly. “No, that was me. Got a bit of a bum leg and was never able to box myself, but I’ve always wanted to be part of it.”
Lawson nodded. “I’m luckier than you. I did get to box when I was a lad.”
He slapped himself lightly across the chest. “Too bad you never saw me in the ring, Suzie. Deadly I was, I tell you. Deadly.”
Mrs. Watson cooed accordingly as the publican looked on in amusement.
“And now that I’ve made good in my old age,” said Lawson, once again addressing the publican, “I’m looking for a few boxers. Saw two I liked in Manchester, but turned out they were sponsored by a friend. And they were the only good ones—the rest were useless.
“So I thought I’d try my luck in London. Look in on a few places with good reputation and see if I see anyone promising. And of course”—he set a sovereign on the bar—“if I get the talent I want, I won’t forget the one who made the introduction, Mr. uh—”
“Mowlem is the name, sir.” The pub owner took out two glasses, poured a golden liquid inside, and passed one each to Mrs. Watson and Lawson. “And you are—”
“Harold Nelson, lately of Manchester. And this is the missus, of course.”
“Of course,” said Mowlem, bowing slightly to Mrs. Watson, a respect accorded not to her, per se, but to the shining coin on the bar. “Now, Mr. Nelson, I’m sure you know that sponsors can be a feisty bunch. If I made introductions willy-nilly, I might find myself cornered in my own pub by angry men demanding to know why I helped to poach their boxers.
“However…” He drew out the word.
Mrs. Watson tensed but pretended to study her bracelet.
“At the moment,” continued the publican, “there are three hardworking young people who have recently lost their sponsor. He hasn’t been seen in these parts since October of last year, and their stipends ran out in April.”
Mrs. Watson’s heart leaped. Could it be—
“If I stopped paying someone four months ago, I wouldn’t consider them remotely obliged to me today. And indeed one of the boxers has found a new sponsor. But last I heard, the other two still held out hope that their Mr. Underwood might return.”
The sound of that name pulsed in Mrs. Watson’s veins, a wild relief. She took a healthy gulp from her glass. West Country scrumpy, going down surprisingly easy.
“That’s good intelligence, that,” Lawson said heartily. He turned to Mrs. Watson. “See, I told you I had a good feeling about this place.”
Mrs. Watson clapped her hands. “I guess now it’s just a matter of meeting these young boxers. Is it not, Mr. Mowlem?”
“I haven’t seen those two lately,” said the publican. “But their friend, the one who already has a new sponsor, will be here tonight for a fight. I believe he wants them to follow his example and jump ship.”
“Oh?” said Mrs. Watson. She set an exaggeratedly quizzical fingertip on her chin. “Is he helping his friends out of affection, or is he afraid that this Mr. Underwood might return, and therefore doesn’t want to be alone in abandoning him?”
“Could be both.”
Lawson narrowed his eyes. “Do you expect this Mr. Underwood to come back, Mr. Mowlem?”
The publican picked up another pint glass to polish. “Hard to say. Until the kids’ stipends stopped coming, I expected him to turn up any day. But after that, let’s just say, now I’d be surprised if he did turn up.”
“But there’s still a chance that he would?”
“Sure.” The publican shrugged. “But by this point, if he’s a man with any sense of decency, he wouldn’t make a fuss. After all, he’d stopped being those kids’ sponsor.”
Lawson turned to Mrs. Watson again. “Well, what do you say, Suzie dear?”
“I guess you’ll need to ask around a bit, won’t you, Harry? But I don’t mind.” Mrs. Watson caressed the plume on her hat again. “It’ll give me time to order new hats and shoes to go with my new frocks.”
“Ah, I knew you’d never object to a longer stay in London.” Lawson downed a finger of scrumpy and asked the publican, “You wouldn’t be able to tell us anything about this Mr. Underwood, would you? It sounds as if he must have had a moneyman handling payments to his boxers.”
“I believe he did, but that’s all I know about that. The kids themselves would know more.”
Mrs. Watson slapped her palm down on the bar. “You don’t suppose, Mr. Mowlem, that some other boxer or sponsor did Mr. Underwood in, do you? In that case, it might not be wise for us to inquire too closely.”
Lawson tapped his fingernails against the side of his glass, making little pings. “You have a point, good woman. But then again, we haven’t even met the kids yet. If we don’t like the kids, then we’re certainly not going to ask more questions about this missing Mr. Underwood.”
Mowlem glanced toward the sovereign that still lay on the bar, quietly glistening. “It’s odd, Mr. Underwood’s disappearance—no doubt about it. But if you’ll indulge me for a moment here, Mr. Nelson, I don’t think it was connected to boxing. Mr. Underwood wasn’t exactly one of us, if you know what I mean. I’m not sure where he hailed from. And while he was most certainly a man you wouldn’t want to cross, he didn’t grow up in these streets—and maybe not in any kind of streets.
“He liked boxing, but he didn’t exactly associate with boxing folks—even his kids held themselves a bit apart from the rest of us. He came to fights, but he didn’t become friends or enemies with anyone. And if his methods were dirtier than anyone else’s—” Here the publican hesitated. “Well, let’s just say that when all was well, I didn’t hear much about Mr. Underwood, except speculation on where he came from and what he did besides sponsoring boxers.”
Mrs. Watson set an elbow on the bar and dropped her chin into her palm. “You’ve made me curious, Mr. Mowlem. What did folks think about where he came from?”
“They thought that maybe he himself wasn’t a gentleman but his father was.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Watson, elongating the syllable to signal her understanding.
Goodness, they thought him a by-blow.
“He didn’t drink, didn’t carouse, didn’t get into fistfights, didn’t look at anyone’s lady the wrong way,” said Mowlem, a note of genuine wonder in his voice. “I see no reason anyone from hereabouts would want to ‘disappear’ him.”
Mrs. Watson perked up, an affectionately indulged woman who caught something in the conversation and wished to receive a bit of praise for her cleverness. “But you said, Mr. Mowlem, that before this Mr. Underwood vanished, no one had anything particularly evil to say about him. What about afterwards?”
“I hate to say it,” said Mowlem, shaking his head, “but lately there have been all kinds of rumors accusing him of cheating and knavery.”
Lawson, who had just taken another sip of his scrumpy, set his glass down with a thud. “And you want us to step into all that muddy water?”
Mowlem rubbed hard at a spot on the pint glass in his hand before he looked up and met Lawson’s eyes. “If you were from London, Mr. Nelson, maybe I’d have second thoughts. But since you’re taking the kids to Manchester, you won’t have trouble from anyone.”