Chapter Sixteen
The bookbinding shop where Mumble worked had a bow window that displayed beautifully bound ledgers, journals, and books of private correspondence. Behind the proudly exhibited wares, a curtain had been drawn shut.
But apparently, to customers in the know, this Sunday closure was incomplete. Charlotte watched from a nearby lamppost as a refined-looking elderly couple rang the bell and were admitted. They emerged a few minutes later, the husband carrying a pair of packages.
Mumble, holding open the door, half bowed as they departed.
He spied Charlotte, dressed as Mr. Herrinmore, standing across the street. Without any notable reaction, almost without hesitation, he continued to hold the door open.
Charlotte crossed the street. “How do you do, Mr. Waters?”
“I can’t complain. Yourself, Mr. Herrinmore?”
“Other than that I am working on a Sunday, no complaints either.” She smiled. “May I have a moment of your time?”
Mumble inclined his head. “After you, Mr. Herrinmore.”
Just enough daylight filtered into the interior for Charlotte to make out the display of stationery to one side and the locked cabinets to the other side, glass panes reflecting darkly, obscuring the tomes and assorted objects they housed—the bookbinder also had a good reputation as an antiquarian trader.
Mumble took her into a workroom at the back of the shop. Here it was much brighter, curtains open, lamps lit. At the center of the space was a large table on which lay several oddly shaped, milky-white sheets—calf vellum, cut as book covers.
Mumble donned a long dark apron and stationed himself before a smaller raised table on which another piece of vellum, this one perfectly rectangular in shape, had been spread and pinned on a frame. He picked up a metal container and applied a thin uniform layer of something translucent and sticky-looking to the vellum—a glue meant to neutralize the lime that had been used in dressing the skin, most likely.
“It is a beautiful craft, bookbinding, but one that is likely to become less and less in demand in our mechanical age,” commented Charlotte.
“That it is a beautiful craft is enough reason to learn. Mr. Rosenblatt wasn’t always a bookbinder, and I need not always be one,” said Mumble without looking up. “Do you have more questions about Mr. Underwood, Mr. Herrinmore?”
“I do.”
Mumble continued his work, sizing the vellum in gentle yet swift strokes. “I hope you won’t mind, but I am not convinced that you are who you say you are. Or perhaps I should say, I have never believed that a rich man from Manchester is interested in Jessie and myself as boxers.”
Charlotte smiled slightly. Excellent timing—she was about to drop that fa?ade, too. “Highly astute of you, Mr. Waters. You are correct that Mr. Nelson is no Manchester man of business but a friend who was kind enough to lend his help to my investigation.”
She handed him a calling card for E. E. Herrinmore, private investigator.
Mumble set down his brush, wiped his hands on a rag, took the card from Charlotte, and studied it. “A private investigator. Like Sherlock Holmes?”
Charlotte did not bat an eyelash. “I wouldn’t presume to compare myself to the great consulting detective. But his work has created a certain demand that he cannot fulfill by himself, especially now that he is overseas for his health.”
Mumble pocketed the card, picked up the frame of vellum, and examined it under a lamp. “What are you investigating, exactly, Mr. Herrinmore?”
“I’ve been tasked to find Mr. Underwood—or to discover what has befallen him, if he is no longer among the living—by someone who has known him for over thirty years and is deeply invested in his welfare.”
Mumble, satisfied with the vellum, put it to dry on a rack that held several similar frames. Then he took another frame of vellum from the bottom of the rack and set it on the raised worktable. “I believe Mr. Mowlem at the Unicorn already told you that Mr. Underwood didn’t mingle with the boxing crowd. If you’re looking for clues to his disappearance, you’re looking in the wrong place.”
“Is that why you and Miss Ferguson are so interested in Mr. Underwood’s dwellings? You suspect that he has been hiding at home?”
Mumble, about to set a long ruler against the top of this new sheet of vellum, stilled. “What do you mean, Mr. Herrinmore?”
“I visited the villa belonging to Mr. Underwood’s mistress. It has sat unoccupied for some weeks but has been recently searched. The intruder—or intruders, most likely—left behind no hints to their identity inside the house, but in the garden, I found this.”
“This” was a strand of reddish-brown hair that had been varnished and made into a small loop, the ends of the loop held together by silver fastener.
“It seems that an errant twig caught on some sort of head cover—a black knitted cap, I would venture, judging by the trace of yarn left behind on the twig. The tip of the twig further snagged on a piece of mourning jewelry underneath the cap. And in the ensuing struggle for the wearer of the cap to free everything, this insignificant loop of hair was left behind.”
Charlotte held it up. “Imagine my surprise when I saw Miss Ferguson sporting an ornament made of small loops of hair just like this two nights ago, when I first laid eyes on her.”
Mumble turned and looked directly at Charlotte. “Thank you for not saying anything at the time. Johnny isn’t involved in this—nor does he have any need to be. Jessie and I were looking for Mr. Underwood, not he.”
Charlotte inclined her head in acknowledgment of his expression of gratitude. “I believe that Mr. Esposito is not involved in your efforts. However, you and Miss Ferguson, you last saw Mr. Underwood in autumn. Your stipend ran out this April. Yet you sought him not last year, nor in April.
“You visited both his mistress’s villa and his accountant’s office toward the beginning of the week—and you were at his mistress’s new place even more recently, if certain reports are to be believed. I’m curious as to why you’ve been so interested in Mr. Underwood of late.”
The apprentice took a pencil, leveled the ruler with the top of the new sheet of vellum, and began to mark a row of equidistant dots. “I could ask the same of you, Mr. Herrinmore. The party that engaged you, the one who was so interested in Mr. Underwood’s welfare, why did that person wait until now to act?”
“That person has been and remains in considerable difficulty. Communication between them had been sporadic for some time. It was only lately that Mr. Underwood’s lady was able to convey the news that he was missing.”
Mumble, now marking dots on the bottom of the vellum, glanced up, his gaze dark and unreadable. “And why did Mr. Underwood’s lady wait so long to do that conveying?”
Sharp boy. “She claimed that although she hadn’t seen him in six weeks, communications from him did not cease altogether until slightly less than three weeks ago. And he was, until then, most reliable at dispatching news of his well-being.”
Charlotte took off the spectacles she wore for the role and polished them with her handkerchief. “That’s my reason for not inquiring into his disappearance earlier. What about you? What has made you into an ardent housebreaker these last few days?”
Mumble began to connect the dots on the vellum, dividing it into thin segments. “Mr. Herrinmore, I am Roma. What makes you think I would admit to any charges that might get me dragged to the nearest police station to answer questions?”
His reaction was not unanticipated. “Let’s find some less sensitive topics of discussion then. I was given the addresses to those two places in St. John’s Wood. How do you know about them?”
“Maybe Mr. Underwood told me about them.”
“Even the second one, which was acquired long after he disappeared from view?”
“Sponsors have mysterious ways.”
He was neither nervous nor hostile but simply less than forthcoming—Charlotte suspected that he would have been even less cooperative had she not found that loop of hair from Jessie’s ornament. She tried a different tack. “Have you ever seen his mistress?”
Mumble lifted the vellum and began cutting along the lines he had drawn. “I once saw a hackney stop in front of Johnny’s place. The cabbie accepted a large basket from the passenger and carried it to Johnny’s front door. By the time someone answered the door, the carriage was already driving away, but I happened to be standing near the window and saw a woman look out from the carriage.”
“What did she look like?”
“Dark hair. Good-looking. In her thirties.”
Charlotte nodded. “What are the vellum ribbons you’re cutting for?”
“To use as lacing to strengthen a large book’s spine.”
“And were you and Miss Ferguson at or near Pettifer’s Hotel yesterday afternoon?”
“We passed in front of it. The hotel recently began to acquire bread from the tea shop where Jessie works. Since we were already out and about, she wanted to show me the fancy place that is now serving bread she helped to bake.”
“And afterwards, did you go back to either of the mistress’s places again?”
“I shall not dignify that with an answer, Mr. Herrinmore.”
“Very well, Mr. Waters.” Charlotte set her spectacles back on her nose. “I’ll leave you to your work and show myself out.”
He rose. “I’ll need to latch the door after you.”
As he opened the front door to let her out, he said, “I still don’t believe you, Mr. Herrinmore. You are not who you say you are. And I very much doubt that the one who sent you is in fact a friend of Mr. Underwood’s.”
Charlotte looked back. “That is an odd sentiment to express, Mr. Waters. Are you searching for Mr. Underwood as a friend?”
Mumble blinked.
Charlotte marched away.
At various points in the excavation process, the woman had been the kicker, the bagger, and the trammer. The kicker, lying on a plank slanted at a forty-five-degree angle, drove a kicking iron into the clay ahead with their feet; the bagger swept up the loosened material into bags; the trammer then placed the bags onto a cart that rode on wooden rails placed on the floor of the tunnel, and pushed the cart out until it reached a point where the displaced earth could be removed and disposed of.
Every single position entailed cramped and laborious work, all undertaken under complete silence, whenever possible. At the end of every shift, measurements were taken and retaken. Were they still on the predetermined path? Had there been any deviation? Success depended on absolute accuracy; anything less would see them emerge in the wrong place.
Wrong and deadly.
That hour of reckoning was drawing nigh. They had finished the slanting upward portion of the excavation and were now digging straight up.
Most of the digging had been done by the day crew—the din of a busy thoroughfare allowed them to advance faster, rougher. But now they worked at night, in the hope that their destination would be as empty as possible.
Her hands perspired inside her gloves. Her shoulders ached. And her neck felt like a stem that had been twisted this way and that once too often, barely able to hold up her head in this space that forced her to work at a contorted angle.
The candle near her feet flickered. She almost wished it would go out—that would force them to leave. But no, the candle burned on, its flame feeble yet steady.
She lifted her trowel. Dirt fell. The bagger swept everything up soundlessly. She took another breath. The candle must be lying. The air must be oxygen-deficient. Why else would she feel light-headed—surely not from fear alone?
In the silence, the noise of metal on stone was an explosion. She stilled. The bagger emitted a soft gasp.
So soon—too soon. She was not ready. But they had reached the very lowest level of the structure they had been aiming for.
It was as simple as that.
“My dear, do you remember a time when you broke into places—or attempted to, at least—and I merely stayed home and fretted?” whispered Mrs. Watson. “Now look at me.”
It was almost exactly a year ago that Miss Charlotte performed her first feat of breaking and entering—which had gone none too well. Afterward she’d had to endure a lecture from Mrs. Watson concerning risks that one ought not to take.
Tonight, the two women had been lounging in the parlor of their hotel suite, having a cup of tea before bed, when Miss Charlotte had risen and ambled to the window. “A fog has rolled in.”
Mrs. Watson sat up straighter. “And?”
“And I’ve been asking myself why Mumble and Jessie were so interested in Mrs. Claiborne’s houses. At first I only wondered what they might know that we don’t, and then it occurred to me—”
She turned around. “Ma’am, where do you suppose Mr. Underwood would be safest now, if he were still in London?”
Mrs. Watson stared at the girl a moment. “You mean, at one of Mrs. Claiborne’s houses?”
“To be sure there could still be other parties looking for Mr. Underwood, but two seems about the right number. We represent Lord Bancroft, and Mumble and Jessie, possibly an enemy of his. And if both parties have already searched these houses from top to bottom—”
Mrs. Watson was on her feet. “Then the houses become, for the moment at least, ideal shelters for Mr. Underwood!”
“I was planning to test that hypothesis later, in a few days, but”—Miss Charlotte gestured toward the obscured street outside the window—“a fog has rolled in.”
And there was no better time for breaking and entering than under a thick blanket of London fog.
So here they were. They had already been to the villa, where they’d found no trace of Mr. Underwood. This made Mrs. Watson more nervous about the town house. Since they still had the key for the villa, their entry had been technically legal. At the town house, however, Miss Charlotte had picked the locks to the mews and the back door.
Mrs. Watson’s derringer was in her pocket. In her hand she clutched her favorite weighted umbrella, almost as slender as a walking stick. If Mr. Underwood wasn’t at the villa, then there was a greater chance he was here instead.
They went through the entire house, from the attic to the basement. And the only thing Miss Charlotte could be sure hadn’t been there earlier was a handful of advertisements and circulars that had been pushed through the mail slot on the front door.
“If Mumble and Jessie have been here, they have been very careful and disturbed nothing,” said Miss Charlotte, her expression pensive.
Mrs. Watson was disappointed that they hadn’t uncovered anything, but she was also, deep down, relieved. Mr. Underwood was a man who did not want to be found, and she was not confident they could have left the house unscathed if he had been on hand.
“But there is one place we haven’t looked at yet,” added Miss Charlotte.
That place was the coal cellar.
The town house, as was often the case, had a set of stairs beside the front door, leading down to the basement service entrance. The space was enclosed by a wrought iron fence. From the service door, the cellar was directly opposite on the other side of the enclosed space, its interior entirely under the street.
Fog swirled damply around Mrs. Watson’s face. The vapors smelled of rotten eggs and standing water that had started to scum over. She waved a hand in front of herself and whispered, “But surely Mr. Underwood couldn’t stay in there.”
It was a dark, unfinished space with no ventilation. If Mr. Underwood was running for his life and had police dogs chasing after him, then perhaps the coal cellar might not be the worst place to hide until the coast cleared. But was he facing that kind of danger?
Miss Charlotte went to work on the padlock. But only a moment later, she straightened. “The lock is jammed. It looks as if a key was broken off inside.”
Mrs. Watson’s blood pulsed. “And that wasn’t the case last night?”
“No. Last night Lord Ingram picked this lock in less time than it would have taken me to eat a biscuit.”
“What do we do?”
“I suppose we could drop matches from the hatch on the pavement, but the hatch would not be easy to lift up.”
Coal cellars under the street usually had an opening on top for replenishing coal, but the hole was blocked by a heavy metal cover that fitted exactly flush to the opening and exactly flush to the street, which was highly challenging to remove if one didn’t already have access to the coal cellar underneath.
“Let’s find Lawson,” suggested Miss Charlotte.
Lawson had driven them to St. John’s Wood and parked several streets away. They found him exactly where they had left him. Alas, he didn’t have bolt cutters, but in the boot of the carriage he did have screwdrivers.
Back at the town house, Miss Charlotte set to work, loosening the hasp on the coal cellar door. It took some time, as the screws had rusted in place. But as soon as she had detached the hasp from the doorframe, the padlock became merely a decoration.
Mrs. Watson’s heart thundered. Miss Charlotte had investigated a number of unnatural deaths. Yet somehow, in all this time, Mrs. Watson had never seen the remains of a victim, let alone discovered one.
And she did not want to. Incoherently, she prayed that the jammed lock had resulted from a simple lock-picking accident.
Miss Charlotte pulled open the door and shone her pocket lantern into the stygian interior.
“Do you see anything?” Mrs. Watson barely got the words out.
Miss Charlotte did not answer but struck a match and tossed it inside.
Mrs. Watson stopped breathing.
There, against the far wall of the largely empty coal cellar, lay a roll of carpet.
Mrs. Claiborne? Surely not! Mrs. Watson tried to remind herself that she didn’t believe Mrs. Claiborne entirely, not even above half.
And yet…
Had the hapless girl been caught just when she was beginning to feel safe? But who wanted her dead?
Miss Charlotte stepped into the cellar, her footsteps gritty upon the few inches of coal remaining on the floor. Reflexively, Mrs. Watson followed, almost not feeling the chunks of fossil fuel poking into the soles of her shoes.
Maybe she was being far too morbid. Maybe there was no cadaver here at all, merely some loot that had been conveniently stashed away. Maybe—
The carpet had already unrolled somewhat in transit. Miss Charlotte pulled at the edge still caught under the weight of whatever it hid.
The edge did not budge. Miss Charlotte yanked again, again it did not budge.
Mrs. Watson bit the inside of her lip, set down the pocket lantern she held, and joined Miss Charlotte. They each took one side of the carpet edge and pulled.
The carpet edge gave and flapped back.
And Mrs. Watson was looking not at a lovely young woman, taken before her time, but a middle-aged man she’d never seen before, his eyes open, his lips slack, a look of sorrow and regret on his grey lifeless face.
In horror, she looked toward Miss Charlotte, who murmured, “I see we’ve found Mr. Underwood.”