Chapter Eighteen
Constance, after arming herself with a heavy stone inside a leather satchel, had obtained several ideas and a change of clothing from Juliet.
Her mother had actually looked frightened when Constance agreed to take Gerry with her.
But then, she had also looked disapproving when Constance hugged Marissa, the girl from her establishment whom Juliet had taken on only the day before yesterday.
It was a dangerous as well as frustrating search in some filthy places.
Even the lie that she owed Kenny money and was anxious to pay it back was greeted with blank looks.
The closest she got was a couple of people who had seen him last night but not since.
A brief spark of hope was caused by Nevvy’s vagrant friend Harry, who knew Kenny by sight.
“He don’t live round here these days. Got a posh gaff in the West End and a rich wife, I heard.”
“So did I,” Constance said.
An hour later, she sent Gerry back to her mother and trailed back to the office to see if there was news from anyone else.
There wasn’t.
She sat in her own office with her sore feet up, and Hat brought her a cup of tea.
“Maybe it’s a job for your brain, ma’am,” Hat said, “not your feet.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
Where would the bully have gone? The axe-wielding character they had sent back to him last night—in retrospect, a mistake—must have warned him to bolt immediately.
Kenny hadn’t even had the decency to warn his wife, just torn the page out of her journal, no doubt taken what money he had found on the premises, and legged it alone.
He could have been walking the streets ever since, dodging policemen and all the places he was known.
There were hundreds of hiding places in London, from cheap hostels to rookeries. Kenny could probably afford better, but unlike his performance last night, he would not want to stand out and be noticed.
So somewhere without people who might know him—an empty place—with little chance of encountering a policeman.
Aside from the worst of the backstreets and slums—where he would stand out in his fine clothing, if he was wearing the same garb as Solomon had described last night—where could one avoid the police?
As a child, and a much younger woman, Constance had been quite adept at dodging local constables, a stolen apple or loaf of bread hidden about her person. One had to be inconspicuous and quick and know the terrain. And thinking quickly helped.
Unbidden, one such occasion flashed into her mind.
She had still regarded the theft and evasion as a game of hide-and-seek in those days, but this time, the constable concerned had been young and spry and unafraid to follow her into the more dangerous alleys and closes.
He had even enlisted the help of one of his fellows.
How had she shaken them off in the end? For they were annoyingly persistent.
She had been about to hide her loot when the idea came to her.
She had abandoned one of the apples in an alley, as if she had dropped it by accident, and then doubled back by circuitous routes to the scene of her original crime.
There, she had walked openly among the costermongers’ barrows and kiosks, mixed with the buyers who hadn’t even noticed her theft the first time.
The policemen had never imagined she would return there and hadn’t come near her.
Slowly, she sat up straight. The police had been swarming all over Veronique’s shop and the rooms above all morning.
They had found all the evidence they could, from her books to the concealed bottle of laudanum.
They had no reason to go back because they knew Kenny had gone into hiding, and he had no reason to go back.
Except that he would have keys.
Constance finished her tea, then changed into more respectable garb, told Hat where she was going, and sallied forth to Veronique’s shop near New Bond Street.
It was worth a look, at least until she had a better idea.
Madame Veronique’s still looked every inch the tasteful, fashionable modiste establishment. People milled up and down both sides of the street, some gazing at window displays, others entering or leaving shops. No one appeared to be skulking or paying undue attention to Veronique’s.
Constance crossed the road. The window display had changed to a gorgeous dark-red gown and a pair of long ivory evening gloves. She paused in front of it, but there was no way to see into the shop beyond. She moved to the door, which was locked, as she expected. A sign proclaimed, Closed.
She moved back to the window, as though longing for the gown on display.
Two fashionable ladies stopped by the door, and one pushed it to get in. “Oh, drat the woman!” she exclaimed. “It’s closed! And I have a fitting at four.”
Her companion consulted her watch. “It’s already ten minutes past. Perhaps she thought you weren’t coming.”
The first lady addressed Constance. “Your pardon, ma’am, but do you also have an appointment with Veronique?”
“No, but I had hoped to add to my order,” Constance said. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone there.”
The lady knocked peremptorily on the glass door and shielded her eyes to peer inside. “Not even the girl!” she said disgustedly. “If one can’t trust Veronique, whom can one trust? Come, Marcia.”
Constance waited until they were out of sight and then began looking for the way to the back of the shop, from where deliveries must have been received and sent out. She also wondered about an outside entrance to the flat above.
The outside entrance was from an alley at the back leading onto a tiny backyard and a solid wood back door. No outside stairs. The upper windows were as blank as the ones at the front of the building. The lower ones gave nothing away either.
As though she had every right to be there, Constance marched into the yard. Immediately, the hairs on the back of her neck prickled.
Someone is here…
She flicked a careless gaze to right and left and saw no one. Only when she’d reached the door and knocked smartly did she whirl around, hefting her heavy bag like the weapon she had turned it into. Her heart thudded hard and seemed to stop.
The still, dark figure of a man stood against the yard wall, gazing at her with interest. He was badly dressed in clothes that might once have been fine.
He wasn’t young, though he still had a fine head of black curls and lively, hard, dark eyes.
There was strength and unspoken menace in his very poise.
Worse, she recognized him.
“Good afternoon, Constance,” drawled Jason Madly. “You always could surprise me.”
When she could trust herself to speak, she said, “Mr. Madly. You do seem to keep turning up like the proverbial bad penny. Do you live here? Or are you just visiting?”
“Poking around, my dear,” Madly said, coming closer. “Like you.”
Madly had never offered her violence. But it had always been in him. She stood her ground, ready for him. “Visiting whom?”
“I always admired your superior grasp of grammar. So refreshing amongst the ignorance and the filth.”
“I hope that doesn’t also refer to me.”
“My dear Constance, hardly.” He looked her up and down, not quite insolently. “You are looking particularly well.”
“Thank you. In all honesty, you are running a trifle to seed. But then, you’d have to be to associate with Mr. Kenny. Or is it Mrs. Kenny?”
“Hard to tell, but there’s someone in the house. Upstairs.”
Again, her heart thudded, and she only just stopped herself from glancing away from him to the windows. He looked, though.
“Who?” she asked.
“Just a shadow passing the window at the front when I first turned up. Faint sounds when I pressed my ear to the door.”
Was he lying to her? Solomon had said Madly knew Kenny but hadn’t seemed interested. What was his interest now?
“Why are you here?” she demanded.
“Oh, someone mentioned the name Veronique recently. I just came for a look. Why are you here? I can’t believe the inestimable Kenny is a client of yours.”
“Did you follow him here?” she asked bluntly.
“No. But he lives here, doesn’t he? And no one has answered your knock. Yet.”
He took another step forward, but to the side so that he stood beside her, slightly in front. Her heart in her mouth, she turned to face the back door and heard the distinct clunk of a key turning in the lock.
She could be trapped here, between Madly and Kenny. At best, if Madly proved to be on her side, she could be trapped in the middle of a vicious fight. She had no idea which of them would win, or what Madly’s motive was for being here at all. Surely her best chance was flight.
And yet if she did flee, she might never know who was turning that handle. Kenny might slip away again. She had to know…
Poised for flight, her heavy bag again grasped like a weapon, she watched the door open.
Solomon stepped out, as elegant and suave as ever.
Her knees sagged with sheer relief, and yet somehow she closed the distance between them, as though protecting him from Madly’s attack.
“Sol,” she breathed, as his arm came around her waist, solid and soothing.
“Mr. Grey,” Madly said, as though amused. “I should have known. Quite an ally, Constance.”
“I see you have met my wife,” Solomon said calmly, and she had the satisfaction of seeing surprise in Madly’s jaded eyes.
“Oh, very well done,” he said admiringly. “Quite the catch, Mrs. Grey. So you are the Silver part of the equation.”
Constance had no interest in words. She was shaking Solomon by the lapel. “What were you doing in there?”
“Looking for Kenny,” he said as though it were obvious—which, in retrospect, it was. He had had the same idea as she. “In vain, I might add.”
“How did you get in?”
“The back door was unlocked. Sergeant Flynn was uncharacteristically careless.” Solomon’s gaze was locked to Madly’s. “And you came to…?”
“Idle curiosity,” Madly said, just a little too studied in his nonchalance. “You mentioned the name Veronique.”